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Piracy Businesses Software

PC Software Piracy Decreases Worldwide, But Remains Rampant (torrentfreak.com) 136

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A new report published by The Software Alliance shows that usage of pirated PC software is decreasing worldwide. While this is a positive trend for the industry, piracy remains rampant in many countries. This includes Libya, where a massive 90 percent of all software is used without permission.
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PC Software Piracy Decreases Worldwide, But Remains Rampant More

PC Software Piracy Decreases Worldwide, But Remains Rampant

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  • Windows 9 (Score:5, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @03:28PM (#56732794)
    I bought legal copies of Windows 9 from ebay for all my machines, so I didn't have to pirate software. Just had to wait until they were shipped in from Hong Kong.

  • The real pirates... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @03:30PM (#56732810)

    ... are the tech industry, the videogame industry especially with the rise of the internet is basically making broken fraudulent/products and upping the corporate propaganda campaign to sell microtransactions and loot boxes and that requires basically stealing the software. Diablo 3, starcraft 2 and now even starcraft 1 with the latest patch now have drm in them - aka - the software you paid for now requires permission from another computer and violates your privacy at the same time.

    No thanks the mass of tech illiterate idiots that came online high speed internet.

    • Re: The real pirates... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For reals, modern video games are like a buffet you pay for and bring your own food.

  • This is Slashdot so I'm waiting for all the "Piracy shouldn't be a crime... it's not theft... programmers should write code for us for free and not charge us for their work" comments.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      > This is Slashdot so I'm waiting for all the "Piracy shouldn't be a crime... it's not theft...

      How about having a little perspective. WHO GIVES A SHIT about software piracy in a failed state where slavery is being openly practiced? People really need to get their priorities straighted out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Many programmers are willing to write code for free.
      Many companies are willing to give away code for free so that it helps sales of their hardware or services.

  • Meh (Score:3)

    by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @03:32PM (#56732826)

    If your software has switched to a DRM, always-online, subscription based model, the odds are I'll ignore it completely before I'll pirate it. And I'll pirate it before I buy it if I can't figure out:

    A - What it is that your product does exactly
    B - What specific licensing malarkey I need to do what I want
    C - What the 67 different versions actually restrict me from doing
    D - If the product even works as claimed, has decent support, gets updates, etc.

    • If your software has switched to a DRM, always-online, subscription based model, the odds are I'll ignore it completely before I'll pirate it.

      That's my dilemma. Photoshop is the bad one with this. I absolutely refuse to go with their subscription based model. I'm not going to pirate their product- I'll go with a rival product instead, despite being inferior.

      I hate subscription based models- but companies have discovered that whereas they lose customers they manage to milk enough more out of those that stay. I wish everyone would boycott subscription based software services. Make a stand as one.

      • *Exactly* Pirating just gives the Adobe juggernaut more power, as they can claim that piracy hurts their business and using their products further cements their hold on the graphics software industry. Many graphic designers, turned off by the idea of software subscriptions, have abandoned Adobe and switched to Affinity [serif.com] instead. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have proved to be quite worthy replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator. Plus the one-time price of $49.99 each is quite reasonable. Affini

      • Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @05:31PM (#56733576) Homepage Journal

        That's my dilemma. Photoshop is the bad one with this. I absolutely refuse to go with their subscription based model. I'm not going to pirate their product- I'll go with a rival product instead, despite being inferior.

        Give Affinity Photo [serif.com] a try. I really like it and the engine is faster than PS.

        If you know PS, then AP won't take you long to adapt.

        It came out for Mac first, but there is a windows version [affinity.store], they have a trial I think, give it a look.

        I"m also working with On1 RAW [on1.com] to replace Lightroom since Adobe took it CC *rental* too.

        So far, i find it really great and with luminance masking in the RAW workflow...amazing.

        For video, it appears Davinci Resolve 15 [blackmagicdesign.com] will chip away at Premier....

        I refuse to rent my software at this time too...and while adobe is raking $$ in the stock market....this rental move has given their competitors room and incentive to develop and they are coming up with REAL I think Adobe's CC move next, is to more and more push and someday maybe 'force' your content to be kept on their cloud.

        The LR CC and classic thing seems to be paving the way for that.....I wouldn't like that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Selling software is a dying market and these publishers know it...
        They have to compete not only with open source, but also their own old versions. As you've pointed out, many people will go with an inferior product if its more convenient or cheaper.
        They make no money from you continuing to use an old version for years, and in most cases the new version doesn't offer any compelling features, or it's far more bloated and slower.
        The need to constantly introduce new features to keep people on the upgrade treadm

    • Most software has a free trial, or free to play.... In essence the Shareware model is rather strong now. So we can see if we like the program or not.

      As for the rest of the points. I am not going to argue them.

      • Most software has a free trial, or free to play.... In essence the Shareware model is rather strong now. So we can see if we like the program or not.

        As for the rest of the points. I am not going to argue them.

        I prefer the 80's/90's/ early 00's version of shareware. You try they app for free and then buy it if you like it.

        Shareware these days seems to be- 7 days free... then we charge you every month the price we used to charge to own the software outright.

        • Or the software demands an account and your credit card, then charges you seven days later whether you like it or not. Even if you go to cancel, there is no way online you can do this. You have to fight a "customer retention" rep for 45 minutes, only to get hung up on. If you cancel your credit card so they stop charging, three months later, you find some bill collection agency calling your neighbors telling them you are a defaulting deadbeat, and your credit record got turned into shit.

          • Burnable cards from https://privacy.com/ [privacy.com] are fantastic for this purpose

            • True, but the place just waits 3-6 months, hands the bill to a debt collector who tacks a few thousand bucks of fees, and starts pestering your neighbors, your co-workers, and your boss at 2:00 AM about what you owe.

              Thankfully it wasn't me, but it actually was a neighbor who couldn't cancel some stupid monthly payment, and the bill collector's MO was to call as many people who were related to the neighbor as possible. Since they were offshore, they didn't care about the Fair Debt Collections Act.

              If the bus

      • Free to play is usually not that simple. I can understand a lack of interest in not supporting you if you're not playing, but free to play should mean they won't suddenly "lose" your profile and force you to go back to the beginning. I know of a few first-hand accounts of this happening. If you only want people to play for free for X days, then be honest about it and tell them it is a free trial.
        • if you are not paying*

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          Pay to win is usually not that simple

          There fixed that for you.

          • Honestly, I don't understand what the fun is in a game that you pay for powerups etc. There is no baseline and you have no way of knowing if any given part of the game is supposed to be won without paying or not. Is the level you are on easy or hard? It only depends how much you pay. Furthermore, I spend enough time in my real life budgeting what I do versus how much I want to spend, I don't need that invading my games as well.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by jwhyche ( 6192 )

              I do not play pay to win games. I don't see the point in it. Why should I invest time and money in a game when some asshat with a much bigger budget can come in and crush it at will? I also don't see the fun in crushing a opponent by simply being able to out spending him in real life. Where is the satisfaction in that?

              • The main MMO that I play in lately has a 'premium' level where you harvest double resources when gathering and get greatly accelerated skill learning. I have opted to play non-premium as a rule since I enjoy grinding in a game with a competetive economy. Now that my main characters are focused on being non-premium, they would be 'spoiled' from the point of view of how I enjoy playing. I am pretty much locked out from beingvable to give the game's company any money.

              • I play to win games, but not at the cost of having fun with the game.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by fisted ( 2295862 )

              I for one get a deep sensation of pride and accomplishment whenever I purchase more win ingame.

  • The most pirated software in the world, Windows, was given out for free for nearly two years. Of COURSE piracy drops when the price literally becomes zero.

  • I doubt very much that people will pirate games if the game is more a subscription service. The games with the real longevity are in 90s cartridges. Single player games seem to have disappeared. If you want a good game of chess, you'll probably "apt-cache search" or google for an online variant. Would anyone bother getting "battle chess" these days? I see it was remade in 2014, but requires Windows {xp,7,8}, so that's going to be a no from me, won't be looking any further.

  • "...piracy remains rampant in many countries. This includes Libya, where a massive 90 percent of all software is used without permission."

    With a 90% piracy rate, I only have one question; why the hell do the other 10% even bother being legal? I mean seriously, it's rather obvious enforcement is on par with morals and ethics.

    Countries that clearly don't give a shit about legal software probably shouldn't be counted in the piracy statistics. They're more of a constant fuck-you outlier.

    • Why still 10% legal... Because there has to be some legit Windows 98 SE OEM Discs with legal licences laying around somewhere.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      In many places, the 10% is either local branches of international companies which follow the rules set by their corporate HQ, or accidentally acquired legal copies (eg came preinstalled when purchasing hardware).
      In many countries everything is pirated especially in business, all your competitors will be running warez so unless you do the same you're going to be at a significant disadvantage due to your higher costs.

      • ...In many countries everything is pirated especially in business, all your competitors will be running warez so unless you do the same you're going to be at a significant disadvantage due to your higher costs.

        And this speaks to my original point; when "everything" is pirated then the norm isn't piracy; it's simply standard business practice. And it makes little or no sense to artificially inflate piracy statistics by tracking countries who behave this way. In America you have to be 21 years old to legally consume alcohol, but we don't artificially inflate underage drinking statistics by counting every 18 - 20 year old who is legally consuming alcohol in another country.

        Regardless of what's on the books, the li

  • and who reads an 30+ page one.

    Also MS has insane rules each HOST CORE in a VM cluster must be licensed for windows even if say you only need a few windows vm's and it's mostly Linux vm's.

  • Please Read The Linked Report - It's All ESTIMATED (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @04:15PM (#56733138)
    If you look at pages 17 through 19 (inclusive, of the actual report), you'll find some very fine prose that the BSA use to describe the methodology they follow for determining the amount of unlicensed software.

    It's utter garbage.

    It's about as accurate as a weather forecast could be. It contains English-language "formulae" such as:-

    Unlicensed Rate = Unlicensed Software Units / Total Software Units Installed

    and Total Software Units Installed = #PCs Getting Software x Software Units per PC

    Just look at that second formula for a moment. This is an approximation at best. But the absolute worst part of the report is the part in which the BSA explain how they get these numbers. This is, in fact, done for them by IDC. And here is the methodology:-

    A key component of the BSA Global Software Survey is a global survey of more than 22,500 home and enterprise PC users, conducted by IDC in November 2017. The survey was conducted online or by phone in 32 markets that make up a globally representative sample of geographies, levels of IT sophistication and geographic and cultural diversity.... ... ... Respondents are asked how many software packages, and what type, were installed on their PC in the previous year; what percentage were new or upgrades; whether they came with the computers or not; and whether they were installed on a new computer or one acquired prior to 2017..."

    So let's just translate that.

    1. This survey was based on evidence from a telephone survey.
    2. People were called and asked to accurately remember what software had been installed on a computer in the preceding 12 months.
    3. The result of a survey of 22,500 people was then extrapolated up to represent the entire world's software piracy problem.

    We need to remember that this sort of document gets handed around the halls of government and shown to policy makers; the poor data samples, invalid questions, wild speculations, and sloppy calculations that form the heart of this paper then get used as the basis for legislation. Don't get me wrong - software piracy is wrong. With so much fabulous free and open source software available, there really is no excuse for it any more.

    But it's important to remember that this sort of paper is going to be used to argue for ever-more Draconian laws which will restrict the freedoms of ordinary computer users. It's really important that documents like this get properly challenged and that legislators are left clearly understanding that this report belongs in the fiction section of the bookshop...
    • According to this one random web site I chose from a Google search [worldometers.info], Forrester Research estimated that there were in excess of two billion active PCs in the world by the end of 2015. That's more than 2 years ago.

      This is probably an unfair calculation [though no less fair than the BSA's rubbish] but if you estimated that, on average, each person in the 22,500 survey pool had, say, 5 PCs [it was stated that this sample pool was a mix of personal and business users], then the number of people surveyed for th

      • Extrapolated up and used as the basis for a report from the BSA? If you were a scientist of any field that included the use of statistical analysis and you published a report based on a sample size of five thousands of one percent of the likely total pool, would you expect your analysis to be taken seriously?

        Most likely, yes. I'm not a professional statistician, but based on what I can find online, a sample size of 22,500 out of a population of 2 billion should give you a margin of error of about 1%.

        You can certainly argue about the quality of the questions and the accuracy of the responses, but there's nothing wrong with the sample size.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I mean its the BSA, of course they have a history of exaggerated claims many of which have been covered here on Slashdot in the past. The shocking part is more that is is being covered as news on Slashdot instead of pointed out as absurd.

  • Microsoft and Dell no longer wants to sell me software for my Windows machines (they seem to like their lease model).

    And I am not sure how one would pirate Linux...

    • Red Hat Enterprise is tough on the wallet:

      https://www.redhat.com/en/stor... [redhat.com]

      That could be a candidate for piracy...

      Not that I would bother with such a thing.

      • HUH??!!! Free RHEL is called CentOS. No piracy required.

        • I have used CentOS, it's not to shabby. I'm just saying, there ARE versions on Linux one could pirate if being evil was the main goal...

          • the only other major one costing money I know of that restricts access to repositories is SLES. Their OpenSUSE is not the same thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        You can't pirate the support contract, which is what the price tag is for. You can get all the software for free without having to pirate it.

    • And I am not sure how one would pirate Linux...

      I content myself with drawing a little skull & crossbones on the DVD after I've burnt the installer image to it.

  • I stopped buying and playing new PC video games over 6 years ago.

    The last game I bought was Minecraft.

    The last game I payed money to play was Boom Beach. When they turned up the monetization on Boom Beach to ridiculous levels, I quit playing that because it had reached "pay to win" levels.

  • Libya (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @07:24PM (#56734138)

    Here is the plan about Libya

    • 1. Destroy nation state
    • 2. Complain nobody can enforce law
  • If it was PC games I can sort of understand, Windows OS to a point too but considering we are in the age of web services and open source and gluts of free applications, more than any in history including the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, what applications would be pirated?

  • Gamer here- (Score:3)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @09:30PM (#56734656)

    You re-release perfectly good games with new DRM and always on internet requirements.
    You release a stripped down version of the game and sell the rest as DLC
    You expect every title to be paid for again on every platform.
    You abandon your hardware
    You cut off the servers
    You require extra sales funnel installations
    You install spyware
    You completely change games core mechanics with no notice.
    You make up silly numbers and complain about piracy.
    You take gamers to court
    You charge monthly fees on top of full retail price.
    You make micro-transactions mandatory.
    You re-release and ruin classics.

    Sorry, not sorry.

  • I'd rather go OS than pay a subscription but then I'm a casual user. Having my computer out of action due to viruses also has a cost for me nowadays, so that's pirated software out.

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