Pirates stunting software growth

[Jared Moya]

About 35 percent of the world's software is pirated, coming down only 1 percent a year, research group IDC found in a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance, which represents about 50 software companies.


 "A key trend over the last two or three years is organized piracy, which has become a legitimate business in some countries," said Duncan Brown, IDC's consulting director. The study, covering 70 countries representing 99 percent of the world's information technology spending, said a worldwide reduction of software piracy by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate 2.4 million jobs and $400 billion of economic growth.


 The battle against software piracy has been relatively successful over the last 15 years, with the piracy rate in Europe dropping to 35 percent from almost 80 percent in 1992, when the European authorities adopted special legislation.

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[Auggie2k]

Whohoo, go us!

[fleecy]

gee, i thought smoking stunted growth... oh well

[ducttapeBigSexy]

Actually, for once I'm hoping this type of piracy does decrease - mostly because this is the industry I'll be working in :P

But, seriously, there's very little that companies can do to combat organized piracy in countries like China - the only real way to stop piracy there is to get the government to crack down on people selling warez. Like that's gonna happen...

The other option wouldn't really benefit a software company, but would reduce on piracy - and that'd be to move countries with a high-level of piracy into open-source software that's either free or extremely low cost.

[usualsuspect]

Actually, for once I'm hoping this type of piracy does decrease - mostly because this is the industry I'll be working in :P

You're very unlikely to be working on the kind of off-the-shelf software that gets pirated. Most likely, you'll work on custom solutions for single customers, web applications and the likes. No danger there. It's the same reason as free software (as in freedom) doesn't threaten the software industry.

[mountain_rage]

The thing il never understand is why are people spending hundreds of dollards for MSoffice when you have a program like open office for free.

[Afn]

It is easy for the software industry and IP industries to claim piracy is causing massive losses, when open source, ubiquidy and global competition including absence of real economic growth are the real drivers that are causing true losses.

[Class316]

The battle against software piracy has been relatively successful over the last 15 years? huh? It's 1000 times easier to get the newest version of windows today than it was in 1998.

[DigitalJunkie]

By saving money on some software such as trialware with limitations, DRMed CD/DVDs, that's how I can afford things I really need such as security, hardware for my computer. Can most people afford to keep purchase all the software that needs to be updated? I doubt it. No consumers, no revenues whether you're a corporation or government's big spender!

We keep the money in circulation. :)