The US Trade Representative issued yesterday the Special 301 Report.
After staying there for several years, in the so-called Watch List, Bulgaria is no longer there.
I’ve written twice in my blog (read them both so that I don’t have to copy and paste in the current story, please: here and here), and many more times in the Bulgarian and international media about the fact that BSA provides the US Trade Representative with fake data.
We’ve sent a letter to the USTR Robert Portman in May 2005, but it seems it took his office some time to check the data, and also to have one Susan C. Schwab as the new USTR, to deal with this as it should have been dealt a long time ago – stop using the fake data, provided by BSA, remove Bulgaria from the watch list.
The bottom line: BSA provides fake data about the size of “pirated” software, music and films in Bulgaria, and then claims even more fake data. E.g. they said that if Bulgaria manages to lower the “piracy” with 10 % the revenues of the Bulgarian ICT sector would increase with $ 322 M. It is unclear how the decrease with 10 % (equals to $ 2.6 M, according to the same data by BSA), would bring increase in sales with $ 322 M. If such a scheme was to be working, then Bulgaria could immediately decrease the piracy with 100 %, which will bring increase with $ 3.22 B – more than the trade defficit of the whole country! This is just one small example of the ridiculous and fake data interprertation by the BSA.
Now, I only hope that some of the large international media will take on this scandal, and will make public the deeds of the BSA and their fake data.
More information (in Bulgarian, with lots of quotes) can be found at portal.bg. or you can leave comment here, and I will contact you (in case you don’t know already how to find me at veni.com)
Hi there:
Questions from the inocent:
Who is behind BSA?
Why are they of any significance?
What is it that they influence?
Best reg’s
BSA is a respected international organization. It’s the Bulgarians, who claim to represent BSA, that do the “dirty work” in blaming Bulgaria as a “pirate” country, and let the police chase the Internet users as if they are the biggest criminals in Bulgaria, who are to be balmed.
They influence the politicians, like former minister Kalchev, who had to buy totally unnecessary software for the government. BSA fake data is being used to justify why the government has spent as of today more than $ 48 million for 40,000 copies of MS Windows / MS Office (which is more than twice the price of this software in the shops!!).
So, you can imagine why they are of any significance.
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They influence the politicians, like former minister Kalchev, who had to buy totally unnecessary software for the government
It’s the Bulgarians, who claim to represent BSA, that do the “dirty work” in blaming Bulgaria as a “pirate” country, a
They influence the politicians, like former minister Kalchev, who had to buy totally unnecessary software for the government
Who is behind BSA?