The BSA’s report is complete nonsense for multiple reasons.
First of all, higher education doesn’t mean more income. I’m sure there are plenty of law students who are facing large student debts and low income. I’m sure someone at some point has said something along the lines of “I graduated at the top of my class, and I still ended up working at McDonald’s”. News comedian John Oliver once joked about education being the only currently that’s more difficult to spend than bitcoin. It doesn’t help that the educational system fails to prepare anyone for the real world.
Second of all, it’s possible that the countries that allegedly fail to adhere to the “rule of law” do so because of unjust laws. If something is good and easy to do, and the government forbids you from doing so, people will fight their government in one way or another. Of course, I can’t expect copyright trolls like the BSA to take that into consideration. Also, violations of copyright law doesn’t mean a country is lawless, even if the BSA wants us to think that way.
Third of all, the BSA isn’t exactly impartial when it comes to reports about illegal downloading. After all, this is the same group that insisted that, should the United States Library of Congress legalize exemptions the “technological protections” in section 1201 of the DMCA for the sake of automobile repairs, the sky would somehow fall. Also, according to GNU.org, in 2001 the BSA started a “terror campaign” in Argentina, making “slightly veiled threats that people sharing software would be raped.” Given the BSA’s extremist nature, I honestly wouldn’t trust what the BSA says about anything. Also, the majority of recent malware-related news articles I’ve been reading on MyCE have been about ransomware programs distributed via email. Anyone with half a brain knows that email has nothing to do with piracy, even though it is a potential source of malware.
After having careful considered the above, I’ve concluded that I have no choice but to tell the BSA to suck it.
PS: IMHO, there’s really no point in downloading illegal copies of software these days. After all, there are more than enough $0 programs, including entire operating systems, to do pretty much anything a user could want to do, assuming of course you’re willing to forget about all-powerful brand names. I can perfectly understand illegally downloading movies, games, music, etc. Just not computer programs.