HERE they go again. IDC and the BSA share some money again (BSA gets money from Microsoft et al. and then passes it to IDG). Why are they doing this? To produce lies, to be used for lobbying, as usual. They do this a lot as a pair and they make numbers up. Sometimes the target is GNU/Linux in Russia and it all goes back to Microsoft. Sites like Ars Technica disappointingly carry the resultant propaganda and TechDirt actually looks closely at the ludicrous claims:
BSA: reining in software piracy would add half a million new jobs
[...]
Working with the International Data Corporation research group, BSA's new study goes through a series of steps to calculate job losses due to piracy.
First, IDC looks at a country's economy and creates a ratio between how much money that economy spends on legal software and how much that spins off into other job-creating activities. These include "installation, maintenance, customization, training or other activities that add value to software." On top of that: "PC software sold through resellers and stores, online or otherwise, creates revenues that fund employment and investment in distribution."