The Business Software Alliance (BSA), which investigates copyright infringement and piracy for a slew of software clients, has been on the forefront of scare tactics for some time. As covered on Slashdot, they recently estimated that 41% of software on PCs is pirated, and attempt to make the corollary between piracy and malicious code.

This has been a scare tactic for some time now, and many people buy into the supposed direct relationship between piracy and malware, viruses, and other malicious code. BSA’s motivation is clear: if people believe that file-sharing is the culprit in “making their computer run really slow” then perhaps they’ll refuse pirated products. Though their stats on the growing percentage of pirated programs speaks differently.

All BSA’s assertions do is increase the fear that lay computer users feel regarding all things on their computers. They say: “I had a nephew visit for a weekend, and now I get warnings about viruses. I think he downloaded illegal stuff.” Or: “My son ripped a friend’s CD on my computer, and now I have windows popping up telling me I need an virus scan or I’ll lose my data!”

Alas, the only people benefiting from this paranoia are the companies selling “scareware” which gets computer greenhorns to buy completely superfluous security software. Such programs often don’t work at all, are universally overpriced, or do little more than further scare the buyer into getting the entire “suite ” of products and extorting even more money.

But who’s at fault here? Are pirated apps really full of viruses, or are p2p networks teaming with malware posing as pirated apps? And more importantly, who put it there to begin with?

The fact is, the only people suffering from this fear are those who don’t know how to navigate p2p apps appropriately, and who have no understanding of what constitutes copyright infringement. No such scare tactics deter pirates in the least. All malicious code is easily avoided with experience and – God forbid – with learning some general knowledge about computer science and your operating system, whether you share files or not.

I’m not condoning piracy, but I also do not condone BSA’s fear campaign that surreptitiously sidesteps the force that created the market for scareware to begin with – companies like BSA.