A report was recently released by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and market research firm IDC that claims software companies have suffered “losses” of 50 billion. Highlights from the report summarized in an eweek.com article state the worldwide PC software piracy rate rose for the second consecutive year from 38 percent to 41 percent. The report explains this increase is due to the increase in PC shipments in countries such as China and India which are countries with high levels of piracy.
Another highlight of the report states the global recession will cause piracy to increase because consumers are more likely to hold on to their computers longer and they are more likely to install unlicensed software on older PCs. Predictably the global increase in Internet use is contributing to a increase in piracy and the IDC is projecting there will be 460 million new Internet users in emerging markets.
An interesting trend being seen is the popularity of low cost netbooks contributing to a decrease in piracy due to the fact they are often loaded with legitimate software and operating systems. The report also claims lowering global piracy by one point a year would add 20 billion in stimulus to the IT industry.
The report also states the lowest piracy levels are seen in first world nations such as the United States, Japan, and New Zealand while high piracy levels are seen in countries such as Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia and Zimbabwe.
The report provides suggestions for decreasing piracy explaining a combined effort that involves software developers and government working in unison towards improved education and enforcement is necessary. BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman said it best in his own words stating, “The proven ‘blueprint’ for reducing piracy is a combination of consumer education, strong intellectual property policies, effective law enforcement and legalization programs by software companies and government agencies,”.
$53 billion in pirated software = $53 billion in losses. HA! As if everybody running pirated proprietary software could and would pay full price if their only choices were paying for proprietary software or using an open source alternative for free.
I sent a hacked version of Vista to a parallel universe. It will shortly be installed on 5 billion PCs. If I’m calculating losses correctly, Microsoft should be out of business by the end of the week.
Without piracy you would simply have an increase in opensource software usage. There is very little the average consumer can’t do on a Linux machine than they can on a Windows machine. The one exception being gaming.
You want to reduce piracy, lower the price of software. Why is piracy so rampant in 3rd world? No one can afford legit software. If you can buy MSOffice for $5 equiv, why buy at full price? For example, reduce MSOffice to $20 for student/home edition, and they would probably buy it legally to have the tech support. Or lower Vista (for example) to $40 for full version of Home Premier, and I bet their increased sales would offset the price drop. And before you bash Vista, if a game you want but couldn’t afford was $10 instead of $50, would you still pirate it?
You cant have losses on something not physically lost. Plus this is a speculation, you cannot possibly figure this out with out any physical evidence, which is impossible with anything digital.