Software Piracy Will Get Worse 484
gollum123 writes "According to a study done by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and research firm IDC, it is likely that software piracy will continue to expand as the Internet grows. Worldwide revenue loss due to software piracy was estimated at $33 billion for 2004 with about 1/3 of the software used being illegal. But within five years, that number could boom to two-thirds, with the value of pirated software nearing US$200 billion. Countries with the highest piracy rates were Vietnam, Ukraine, China, Zimbabwe and Indonesia while United States, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom had the lowest."
Growing Trend? (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news, the porn industry is getting larger as the Internet grows as well.
Web attacks are on the rise too.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=147388&cid=12
Increased Users = Increased Users (for good or bad)
Is this news?
The question should be "Has software piracy increased disproportionately to Internet User growth?
I don't know.
Actually (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:2, Interesting)
mhhh
software piracy will decrease with FOSS expanding
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, there is some truth to this. A lot of people associate "no name brand" = inferior. In one of my recent comments I complained about the whole free iPod/freeMac Mini/free Sony PSP phenomena. People are more than willing to do ANYTHING to get a free name brand product associated with an image and an easily recognizable logo. If someone did a "freeMicrosoftOffice.com" site, there would be just as many people jumping on that bandwagon because they KNOW Microsoft. They KNOW Office. However, try and do a "freeOpenOffice.org" site and you won't get any bites from the mainstream. This is a problem in the FOSS camp. Marketing is a horrible thing because of how much of a grip it has on the mainstream person. It can be used to control their opinions, their purchases, even who they vote for. People don't want to think. They want something that "just works" and brand name stuff is sold as "just working". Since piracy appears to be "free" access to name brand stuff for many people, they are happy to continue either willingly or ignorantly breaking the law.
In reality, there are few differences in functionality between FOSS applications and their commercial counterparts. Where there is a difference is in how much work you need to do to acquire the FOSS stuff vs. pirated commercial apps. Assuming you're a mainstream user who only barely knows how to use WinZip (that you haven't paid for) and double click on SETUP or INSTALL.MSI files... All you have to do to acquire pirated software is:
1. Run P2P program and search for app
2. Download ZIP, RAR, or other compressed version of app
3. Expand archive of app that you downloaded
4a. If it's self contained, just create a shortcut and run the main application EXE.
4b. If it's an installer, just run it.
5. If it's not cracked (I assume most pirated stuff is cracked) then you might need to look for a crack or regcode generator
6. Run app and be on your way...
To acquire a FOSS app (assuming you're using a really dumbed down version of Linux):
1. Search for an app that does what you want (usually 98% success these days)
2.If they have precompiled binaries in RPM or other packaging format, download and install that
3. You may need to search for and upgrade or install other dependencies (stuff you need to have before you can install the main app)
4. If you can't get binaries and it's a source only distribution, then you need to grab the tar.gz or tar.bz2 archive
5. Expand the source archive
6. If it's following the standard './configure && make && make install' procedure then you should do that now. If it's uses some other compilation method, then you have to read up on that adding to the complexity
7. You might also need to follow up with library dependencies/version issues, etc...
8. If there isn't a tar.gz or tar.bz2 archive, you might need to use CVS to download the current source tree which might be broken since it's in development...
9. Once you've gone through all this, then you need to verify your installation and see if the app works as expected.
10. If you needed to update libraries, you could run into apps that are now broken and need to be recompiled against the new versions of the library meaning more downloads, etc...
Which way do you think Joe Average Mainstream is going to go?
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, at this time, Joe Average Mainstream is not likely to have a Linux box on which to install the OSS applications. If Joe Average User was using Linux, (s)he'd already be using FOSS anyway. Therefore, the steps to acquire and install a FOSS app would be:
The point I am trying to make is that, IMHO, the slow adoption of FOSS is not at all related to ease of installation.
Also, downloads from a Sourceforge mirror are usually much faster than through p2p anyway. Perhaps this, coupled with the "fear of IP lawsuits," could be used to turn more and more people towards using FOSS.
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:3, Insightful)
Likewise, if you are a user at home wanting to learn skills that will be valuable to a potential employer, knowing the employers strategy of sticking with what works
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:5, Insightful)
NumberOfPiratedApps == (NumberOfComputersSold * ExpectedAppsPerMachine) - NumberOfAppsLicensesSold
Since OSS apps tend not to be sold, or recorded in some other manner, the 'expected' piracy will go up.
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would guess that hardware in general "decays" much faster than software (licences).
numberOfComputersSold and numberOfAppsLicensesSold are disjunct and putting them into any correlation is renders all results false.
I for one replaced my computer 3 times in the last five years, but I did not "replace" my MS-Office 2000 licence. Even more I don't expect that I will replace it with Office 2006
(On the other hand I replaced my tax-softw
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:2)
Considering a vastly disproportionate amount of the internet growth and projected growth are in those 2nd and 3rd world countries (Vietnam, Ukraine, China, Zimbabwe and Indonesia) that don't care about piracy or don't enforce piracy laws, then the answer to your question is undoubtedly "yes".
Re:Growing Trend? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how many commercial software vendors went bankrupt because of "piracy" of their stuff? Overall, they all seem to be making plenty of money. Maybe this "piracy" can be thought of like the common cold or mosquitoes --- you'll never eliminate them, but keep them under enough control to not be an overwhelming problem. MS has begun to address the problem in some of the "third world" countries by making lower cost software available
Shareware (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shareware (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shareware (Score:3, Funny)
Now that's what I call wild, unfounded speculation! I'd mod you a troll if I had points.
Re:Shareware (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Shareware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shareware (Score:3, Insightful)
Engineering students probably "cost" milions apiece in this fashion and I suspect the industry at large would actually get hurt very badly if the industry managed/bothered to perfectly enforce copy protection.
If Microso
Re:Shareware (Score:3, Insightful)
People don't pay for crappy shareware... well, because it's crappy. Maybe some people sometimes download cracks or serial numbers to get around registration schemes, but that's really not different from normal "piracy".
I think what really happened is you saw a sha
Re:Shareware (Score:5, Funny)
Insightful research! (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, scientists established today that the bigger a container gets the more it can contain. Still no cure for cancer.
Re:Insightful research! (Score:2, Flamebait)
They want to keep selling drugs that mitigate the symptoms.
The 'charities' that are collecting money for a cancer cure don't want it either because then they'd have no reason to exist.
Re:Insightful research! (Score:3, Informative)
Glad to see you took off your tin foil hat long enough to post here. Most of the people I know who work (or volunteer) at charities do so because they have personal experience with the said charity. For example, an aunt of mine volunteers with the Canadian Cancer Society because (guess what?) she has cancer.
Just because you don't volunteer anywhere, doesn't mean you need to b
Re:Insightful research! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's very different from the original assertion: The 'charities' that are collecting money for a cancer cure don't want it either because then they'd have no reason to exist.
If you're going to claim that ALL (or even a significant majority) of cancer charities are dishonest, you should really back up that claim. Especially since the claim doesn't have anything to do with simple mismanagement of money; it's more an accusation of pure greed at the expense of those they claim to help. Sure a lot of charities waste money through inefficiency and bloat, but on a large scale it's really only a minority that are flat-out deceitful and ill-intentioned.
Yvan eht nioj? (Score:2)
So instead of "Yvan eht nioj" we will have "Yvan eht sab" so that children can rat out their Communist parents?
Bleh.
Crazy predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me, or do the numbers not add up? On the one hand, this:
seems to suggest that the worldwide market is about $100 billion dollars per year. On the other hand, this:
says that they're expecting it to be worth about $300 billion in just five years. Are they really suggesting that the worldwide market is going to triple that quickly? There are really only two things that could cause the market value to grow that fast: increased hardware sales or increased prices. I don't see Intel or AMD planning on tripling sales over the next five years, so I have to assume that most of that growth is expected to come from massively increased prices. Is it any wonder that piracy would be likely to grow, too?
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:5, Interesting)
I think software businesses need to go back to basic economics: the value of non-scarce resources is very low. I think that the only way for the software industry to remain viable is not to be strict on piracy but become a service industry: we will write programs and support it for a fee. Basically this means anyone can use the software, but new software won't be written and existing software won't be supported without payment. Because the actual executing code isn't scarce, it has very little value: the value is in creating that software and keeping it running.
This is very similar to the *IAA issues: the value isn't in the distribution of the art, but in the experience of listening to it and having new music created. This is why I think that software isn't a "real" commodity but a service. (Also why I think information should not be property - information is not 'scarce' and so cannot be effectively managed using concepts of property. There might be another way to manage it, but it's not with property protection laws).
Anyway, I could go on, but the fundamental thing here is that "unrealised sales" is not equivalent to "lost revenue". Lost revenue is simply poor accounting or "we got less than we did before". The software industry, even if piracy increases, will probably still continue to post revenue gains. So their complaint is "we won't have high enough revenue gains" not "we will have revenue contraction".
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:2)
It's according to wikipedia now at $44.000 billion and they estimate $200 billion will be lost to software piracy...
s:BNP:GDP: (Score:2)
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:2)
I agree, it's a pretty optimistic claim but not without merit. It seems to us, in industrialized nations, that software markets wouldn't grow so quickly. But do you think the software market in the United States tripled between, say, 1983 and 1988? What about between 1994 and 1999?
In 1980 there were 724,000 personal computers in servic
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
"We failed to meet our sales quota. It must be because of piracy" --- Quote by chicken little who was interviewed for this story.
Seriously, businesses think piracy is to blame for soft product sales, they fail to think of free and cheaper alternatives, lack of interest, or people that are fed up with their buggy crap that they pass off as software.
And then there is Micro$oft. In the US, almost every PC comes with their software. I doubt anyone other than a geek knows how to get a computer without the latest edition of WinBloat.
Microsoft has had so little piracy due to its exclusive deals with hardware vendors that it had to invent new methods of piracy. M$ has said that if you donate your old hardware to a school that you can't donate your software. Then M$ audits the schools for compliance. ($40 billion in cash and they still want to rape the educational system)
Re:Crazy predictions (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, looks like it's a good time to become a sofware pirate! Profits for software pirates will triple this year! Better quit my network enginer job and get in while the gettin's good!
Midlife crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a guy in my 40s, I know a midlife crisis when I see one. They start when the perception of unlimited possibilities you had when you were a youth inevitably gives way to the realization you are probably not going to set the world on fire; at best you've got to work like hell to keep the bonfires you have set supplied with fuel.
The relevance to the topic at hand is this: I lived and worked through the great informatics boom of the late twentieth century from roughly 1980 to to the dot com crash of 2001. In the late 80s early 90s, we had exponential growth of spending on software, fueled by exponential growth in the adoption of computers. In the late 80s, I worked for a company with few hundred employees, and we used to regularly order literal truckloads of computers. This gold rush atmosphere was artificially prolonged for perhaps another six or seven years by the dot com boom.
The dream was that licensing software was like printing money. Hell, the license certificates after a while started to look like money -- or at least some kind of bond certificate or something.
Well, the gold rush is over. Sure, some people may make huge fortunes creating new, paradigm disrupting products, but by in large the software market (specifically software licensing revenues) is mature, and in some cases may shrink as open source takes over mature application areas.
And, like the former hotshot who looks into the mirror and sees a tired looking, paunchy middle age gent, our friends in the software industry facing a paradigm shift from land office business to the crappy, low margin service sector, are exhibiting stage one of the whole Kubler-Ross reaction to facing the inevitable: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Well, guys, there's good news and bad news about being middle aged. The good news is that you don't have any problems talking to pretty girls anymore. The bad news is that their respectful and call you 'sir'.
Percentages? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing that's a percentage. I wonder what the actual number of pirated software users are for those countries compared to the ones mentioned as having the highest rates. I'd bet the US andother developed countries still have higher numbers.
I'm shocked. (Score:5, Insightful)
BSA should be shut down? (Score:3, Insightful)
These folks have just predicted that they will be two to six times less effective in the next 5 years? [1/3 vs. 2/3 or $33B vs $200B]
Just one problem - IT'S NOT PIRACY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Would we ever expect an organization who profits from piracy to proclaim that the rate of piracy might be decreasing?
Well, I agree with you in spirit, but in all fairness, piracy is where one boards a ship to beat, rape, pillage, and murder people. I think the term everyone here intends to use is "illegal copying".
Why should we accept their categorisations of us and use their descriptions to define us? Descriptions for us like "copy monopoly busters", or "information liberators" and terms like the "information plantation masters" for them would be much more fair and accurate.
I do not condone piracy but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I do not condone piracy but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I do not condone piracy but... (Score:3, Interesting)
They never use it, and most of these people don't know how to begin to use Access for example. The chances that these people would actually buy such programs are remote.
Re:I do not condone piracy but... (Score:2, Insightful)
The people they refer to are companies that are fully developer, profitable and still running off illegal copies of software. I can understand the need to pirate in the beginning since the cost can be quite huge but once you break even it's time to license your shit.
Estimated (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Estimated (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Estimated (Score:5, Insightful)
It's critical for them (and us) to understand the difference between these two concepts:
1. What is the total value of pirated material?
2. How much revenue are the copyright holders losing because of piracy?
I think we all understand why the first number is much larger than the second. I pirate stuff that I never intended to buy. If I couldn't get it free, I wouldn't have it, period. This means that my stolen software is tallied in Figure #1, but not Figure #2. My pirated copy didn't cost them anything, they were never getting my dollar.
The question of how much money they're losing is impossible to answer. The question of the total value of all illegally pirated materials isn't that difficult to estimate, and probably estimate accurately.
The fallacy of the BSA and other IP rights lobbyists/enforcers is in assuming that Figure #1 == Figure #2. When they say, "Internet piracy cost us $30 million last year", they're lying and they know it. What they mean is that the total value of pirated materials that belonged to them was $30 million. This number is unquestionably much more significant than the net affect of piracy on their sales. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that, when all the dust clears, they're losing more money off illegal pirating than they're generating from people who only bought the stuff because they sampled it first.
Really, there's two major sins of ignorance being committed on both sides of this issue. One is being done out of a deliberate attempt to deceive and the other is just wishful thinking.
The first sin I just explained - reporting value of pirated material as being the same as net loss in sales. This is an utter lie for two reasons. First, not all piraters were necessarily going to be purchasers under other circumstances, and there's a small but measurable crowd of people who were not purchasers, but because purchasers because they were piraters.
The second fallacy is committed en masse on Slashdot, and is repeated ad nauseum whenever this comes up. And it is this: "I've bought (insert dollar amount here) worth of CDs this year specifically because I could sample it first. And all my friends are the same way. And all of their friends. Since everybody I know is like this, I assume everybody else in the world is like this, and thus, these companies are profiting by the peer to peer networks." At best this is wishful utopian thinking, and at worst it smacks of downright stupidity. The largest pirating demographics are kids and college students. We who buy after pirating are the exception, not the rule, and yes, there are plenty of studies conducted by independent surveyors that demonstrate this.
Yet another thing the US is trailing in. (Score:5, Funny)
Budget Budget Budget (Score:3, Interesting)
Prices (Score:5, Insightful)
How else is Photoshop so popular? If there were no piracy, people would all be using Paint Shop Pro or something, which is 1/5 the price.
Anyway, as long want software for uses that don't match the price, there's going to be piracy. There's not much we can do about it.
Re:Prices (Score:3, Insightful)
If you make your living as a graphic artist $700 once every couple of years is nothing, if you are a musician $700 for Logic is nothing, etc.
People just like to make exuses that suit there needs, "I would buy it, but it's to expensive." BS, use GIMP then.
Re:Prices (Score:3, Insightful)
So, just to state outright what you're obviously implying, "only people making their living as professional graphic artists NEED Photoshop." Now, in what sense do you mean "NEED". Is this in the hunter/gather sense of the word, like you NEED a base level of nutrition to stay alive? No. Do you mean that, only for these people will Photoshop be
Re:Prices (Score:5, Interesting)
The argument I always heard for why Photoshop is $700 was because of all the piracy.
Baloney. Photoshop is $700 because they've got the screws to the design industry and can get away with that price. Photoshop is used by almost everyone doing professional work with digital pictures. The people that use it know how to use it very well and don't want to switch to another tool of unknown quality (and have to re-learn how to do everything).
It isn't a commodity product needed by low paid secretaries like Word, it's a product of usually well paid professionals, and companies are willing to spend more on those people because it'll wind up saving them more if they get just a few more hours productivity out of them. Furthermore because it's not a commodity product, there's a much smaller market for it than Word/Office. Almost everyone needs an office product, but not many need a super-fancy photo editing program. I get along just fine with Gimp, and have no need at all for Photoshop. Of course I also am not a designer, I just do some occasional photo editing a few random purposes.
Piracy will never be removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Piracy will never be removed (Score:2)
"while United States" (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, I know of one great way to battle piracy.
Meta-Summary (Score:3, Funny)
BSA on piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, this is not news, this is a marketing campaign. The BSA speculating that piracy will decrease, now that would be news.
*cough*OpenSource*cough* (Score:2)
In other news, bootleg copies of the popular KDE desktop environment are expected to decline as more sites install legal versions.
Revenue gain (Score:2, Interesting)
Where is the BSA? (Score:2)
numbers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Prices (Score:2, Interesting)
Price it right and it gets copied less (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Windos OS of the month
2. microsoft office
3. Adobe Photoshop
Why? because they are all way over priced, and have acceptable free alternatives. If software is priced properly then it is not worth searching through the virus and bug ridden back alleys of warez looking for the latest version. The free versions aren't used by as many people because there is a percieved lack of quality in them.
(I said percieved. I used open office in 2001 and it was good except the spread sheet program didn't do curve fits worth a damn. That feature is important to me so I bought Office)
Re:Price it right and it gets copied less (Score:2)
Apps like office and photoshop ARE priced right for their intended audience. These are professional tools for professionals that use them to save time ( = money)
If joe hobbyist can not afford photoshop then
a) he should do the research and find out the the $99 photoshop elements type app will provide him with more than enough power and buy IT
or
b) Do not pirate someone else's intellectual property.
or
c) use an open source equivalent
You are right though, that there are open source alternatives.
I j
Re:It is priced right (Score:3, Funny)
Zimbabwe ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I don't know what they are using the software for - possibly to figure out how to share 1 bag of maize between 5000 people ?
South Africa maybe definately, but please, Zimbabwe ?
Really, the Zim Dollar exchange is Z$15 000 to a US dollar !
If they are pirating software, it's because a copy of windows would cost them the equivalent of 20 years salary !
Surely this is a mistake in the article ?
Re:Zimbabwe ? (Score:4, Insightful)
To them (the BSA) it doesn't matter if people in these countries can't afford to eat, as long as they and there bankrupt governments don't pirate their software!
Sounds extremist, but the majority of BSA literature concerning piracy in third world countries does definatly convey this sort of ideology.
The fantastic thing is... (Score:2)
Now, I'm not for software piracy (heck, I make my money through writing software) I just think that the sonner the Gestapo-like tactics of the BSA are banished once and for all the better.
Meaningless comparison. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, it costs between 200 and 500 yen for a cup of coffee in Tokyo, so...
The flaw of the BSA's main arguement (Score:2)
While such a cliam is largely assumed and unsubstanstiated (escpecially in today's healthy software market), it distracts attention from the amount of jobs that must be sacrificed around the world by companies forced to spend ever larger amounts on often over-priced business software.
Especially in the poorer and third world countries where the vast majority of software piracy occurs.
Think of how much companies are saving! (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, they don't get $megabucks/license but the end-users couldn't afford to pay anyways.
Think of how much they are saving in CD-manufacturing-and-distribution and software-support costs.
[/humor]
Seriously, software piracy IS a problem just like any other piracy, but the "lost revenue" figures aren't very meaningful, what counts is lost profit in a world that is otherwise-equal but where those who pirate instead pay for a license or do without that particular product. If every third-world MS-Office
Piracy or Sharing? (Score:2)
Piracy is a confusing word you should avoid [gnu.org]. The title of the story should read, "Software Sharing To Increase as the Internet Grows." Doesn't sound as bad, does it?
Go Zimbabwe! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, the BSA should back off of us and go attack the Ukraine and Zimbabwe now. I wonder if they consider the reasons that folks in Zimbabwe might pirate software.. perhaps because they want to learn how to use Office but cannot afford it? I'm not sure if the bSA is keeping track of pirated games or just the big commercial apps like Office & Photoshop.
Then again, this was a BSA study. Would they inflate the perceived value of the software? Oh, never!
The real piracy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's reverse the metric a little bit, and talk about the value of some of these products versus the cost. What in the new version of photoshop or word is really worth paying the full price of the upgrade. I don't think that the consumer really finds most of this stuff worth it. People are pirating this software because it's the new version and it doesn't cost anything. In other words, the value of Office 2003 over Office 97 to regular customers is way below the cost.
Go ahead BSA combat piracy. I think you'll find that, at the end of the day, the same sales you're claiming to lose to piracy would have been lost at the cash register anyway.
reputable research (Score:2)
C'mon people, how can you argue when someone like Laura DiDio(t) is quoted. She has such high personal standards.
"Only" 50% market growth in 5 years is a problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
So right now $33B is 1/3 of total "potential sales" of $100M, and total sales of $67B.
As a result of the Internet, over 5 years they expect to see "potential sales" of $300B (if $200B is 2/3), and actual sales of $100B... even assuming their worst case estimate (could boom to 2/3) of piracy levels are accurate. So, the worst case is a 50% increase in the market over 5 years.
This doesn't seem to me to be a problem. I'm certainly not expecting to get that kind of a raise over the next few years.
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Lost revenue" is such a weasel phrase. It's basically a lie -- that money was never headed in their direction, they just want to claim the possibility that someone might have bought their software but endeded up not as a "loss" so they can look like victims.
Valuation estimates (Score:2)
congratz (Score:2)
b: it really irritates me how all these groups are out there yelling for problems that might occur/get much worse and expecting that they be solved now. i should petition congress because my credit card bill next month MAY be higher than expected. is it just me
How do they know? (Score:2)
Its simple economics. (Score:2)
If they can't afford the tolls on the high (legal) road, theyre going to have to gow down the low (pirate) road.
Since there's no blood involved, they probably don't see the hard in 'sharing' an app that they otherwise could not afford.
$33 Billion? Give me a break. (Score:2, Insightful)
If copy protection were perfect (i.e. impossible to pirate software), the software would simply NOT BE USED in these countries. The main reason for the piracy in the first place is that software is really expensive.
You think somebody in China is going to scrape up $200 to buy Windows if the copy protection was suddenly made perfect? Not a chance. To say the industry "lost" $33B is ridiculous.
Imagine That! (Score:2)
Those who can't begin to afford it supposedly pirate it more.
I think I see a correlation here...
It reminds me of a story a real estate attorney friend of mine told me about working at Tandy (Radio Shack).
In asking for a salary increase, he asked an upper level manager why Tandy's pay was so far below industry average.
Their response was: "why should we pay people more? They're just going to quit in two years anyway."
U.S. Piracy is Insignificant Compared to Asia (Score:2, Informative)
let me tell you how to fix it (Score:2)
Pirated copy of XP not working? Try Linux.... (Score:2)
I also think that a very nasty virus that trashes/encrypts all the data files it can would have the same effect. (I am not suggesting that someone makes one however.)
Three Factors (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Software companies must improve the quality and functionality of their software to justify the cost
3. There always have been and always will be theives
The biggest cause of piracy (whether it's music, movies or software) is the cost of actually legitimately buying this stuff. $299-399 is too much for an operating system today. If Microsoft sold Windows at a more reasonable price, say $99 more people would go the honest route. The same can be said for applications. If I'm a home user and I am ambitious enough to want to clone my hard drive, the most popular option I have is Norton Ghost. But I have to pay nearly $70 for that. Again, too much for a product that will be used infrequently. If Norton Ghost was $10-20 it might be easier to consider as a one shot purchase.
Now, couple that with the reality that in order for Windows to be truly useful to a mainstream user they need to buy a LOT of applications... and those $70+ hits add up real fast. Throw in stuff that requires yearly subscriptions like Antivirus software and the cost of owning a computer is expensive. On the flipside, take the same average home user and put a CD in front of him at a flea market that contains about ten or twenty of the programs he's been looking for and charge him $50, he's going to bite. Even moreso when you consider how few people there are in the mainstream computer user community who understand, are aware of, or even care about EULAs. This is the main reason why piracy happens. Software makers seem to be out of touch with what people can afford when they're being nickled and dimed to death. Just like the college profs who pile on the homework never giving a second thought to how much homework you've got in other classes, the software vendors pile on the small charges here and there until it's unbearable.
The other factor, for slightly more intelligent users is that sometimes, the functionality of a program doesn't warrant the price. Photoshop is a good example (and Adobe has wised up some in that arena) of a program that many mainstream users want access to but can't afford. The price of Photoshop is clearly inflated based on how it's most often used (not for profession print work where the cost IS justifiable) by mainstream users to just edit photos on the web. But, at least, Adobe figure out that if they release a stripped down version of Photoshop, many people would be willing to pay a more reasonable price. I'd say they still need to adjust their pricing a bit ($50 is more realistic for a commercial photo editing app). Other companies should follow Adobe's lead if they want people to actually pay for software.
Finally, no matter what is done to try and stem the waves of piracy, there will always be people who are dishonest. There is no way to prevent this without severly impacting your legitimate users. Dongles suck. Access codes suck. Registration sucks. DRM sucks. All they do is mak products more difficult for honest users to work with. They do little to prevent the dishonest from finding ways around them. But the number of genuinely dishonest people is small. The people that the software vendors (and RIAA MPAA) should be concerned with are the people who can be kept honest by providing good products for a reasonable price. The software, music and movie industries fail at this. Instead of providing good products, they provide the lowest common denominator in terms of quality and they charge the highest allowable prices. This is what turns otherwise honest people to piracy. They WANT this stuff, but they can't afford it. What other options do they have. Avoidance is not an option...
Re: (Score:2)
Misinformation (Score:2)
The biggest revenue cash cow for software companies are other companies, schools, and government. Almost all of them generally follow the rules for fear of a BSA audit. Most individuals buy over-priced boxed sets.
The people that make illegal copies are people who wouldn't buy their products anyway--how is that considered to be revenue loss? I don't know anyone who has ever copied software and resold it or bought copied software. These are people who are CHEAP and don't sp
Piracy + Outsourcing = Flamewar (Score:2)
Countries with the highest piracy rates were Vietnam, Ukraine, China, Zimbabwe and Indonesia while United States, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom had the lowest.
The pattern is pretty obvious: the lower the income per capita, the higher the piracy. And why are these countries' incomes so low? Because we won't let jobs out o
33 Billion (Score:2)
what a bunch of crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm from Poland. Let's say I've seen 50 private computers over the last few years (friends, family, etc). Vast majority is Win-based. One friend has legally purchased Win XP ("my dad wanted to buy it, I didn't oppose) and tones of pirated stuff.
Several of them have laptops that came bundled with (legal) Windows.
Average salary in Poland is ~500 Euro (~666 dolars) per month. Fresh university graduates usually earn around 250 Euro. MS Office costs ~250 Euros, Photoshop costs... I don't know, 600 Euro? And so on, and so on. People need that stuff - everybody gets pirated soft, otherwise they would have to spend their entire earnings on software or... turn to open source if the law was enforced.
Piracy helps software companies - that's a common wisdom that everybody knows. Those young people that use illegal stuff eventually get older, start earning better money, buy legal stuff.
If the law was properly enforced, people would move their asses to open source and discover that it ain't bad. I bet all those evil monsters would be very happy.
Worldwide revenue loss due to software piracy was estimated at $33 billion for 2004 with about 1/3 of the software used being illegal.
Given every illegal copy would be purchased... which obviously wouldn't. I can't imagine any of those 50 people I mentioned suddenly found even 200 Euro to pay for anything. Seriously.
But within five years, that number could boom to two-thirds, with the value of pirated software nearing US$200 billion.
What a bunch of crap. "Come on, governments, protect Microsoft and other nice companies from the 33% of world population, which is pure evil and will turn 33% of other people into beasts. Oh, and please nuke Zambia in Vietnam. More and more people get cheap computers over there, but they don't want to spend 200% of their salaries on our divine technology. And while you're listening to us, we'd like to support big pharmacy companies that sued African governments for buying generic anti-AIDS drugs. We strongly believe those little black beggers should die if they can't pay for legal, but 10x more expensive equivalents."
Their numbers are bullshit, though (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no excuse for the Western countries, though. As ridiculous as it sounds, by pirating software made by large corporations you're helping those corporations to stay in the business. You see, you could have used alternatives and supported the people behind those alternatives. This would in turn generate competition and drive the prices down and quality up.
If you build it, they will come.... (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words - next time you think that your software is worth $200 and it does crap - don't be surprised when someone hacks it.
How about 66 billion in stolen software!!1 (Score:3, Insightful)
The point I am making is that the value of stolen software is not based on the actual value of the software, (Windows vs Linux, or MS Office vs Open office) but on the value a company wants to sell it for.
If you have a laptop and a desktop, should you have to pay for two copies or the software, even though you only use one at a time?
If your computer is too slow and you purchase a new one, you can't get your money back for the OS you paid for already, and if you use it on the new computer, you suddenly have a pirated copy. If you have an old car, you can trade it in for a discount on the new one.
If you have 4 computers at home, and one of them has a legitimate copy and the other three have "copies" of the legitimate one, then you can be said to have 3 pirated copies. The industry then can claim that they are losing money on you, even though you only use one at a time and would never have purchased more than one copy otherwise.
In my opinion, one of the major causes of pirating is that companies want users to purchase a new copy of software for each computer you own, and they do not offer discounts for your multiple copies.
That is similar to the problem we are seeing in the music/video industries. They would like you to purchase a separate copy for each player you have, instead of being able to make a copy to take with you while leaving the other in a safe place. (By the way, how many times have you had to buy a CD to replace that audio tape music since the tape will no longer play?) And did you know that each blank tape you ever bought included an industry "rebate tax" to offset the cost of music copies?
Yes, there are a lot of pirated copies of software that really meet the true definition of pirated, but there are many others that are just part of system upgrades or multiple computers at home.
Until the industry comes up with a business model that does not leave the consumer feeling like they were ripped off by having to pay twice or too much, there will always be copying. If Open Office can be distributed for free (plus shipping), then there is a strong feeling that one is a rip-off.
Is is a Loss or is it a Gain ? (Score:4, Insightful)
One's loss is another's gain (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that since piracy costs almost nothing to do, this revenue loss is also a corresponding revenue gain for those who pirate. So another way to say this is, "Due to piracy, the world gained $33 billion dollars worth of software without spending a dime." It doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way, huh?
Re:On the subject of software piracy. (Score:3, Funny)
You are one to talk
Seems your second line is flawed
You are filled with shame