BSA: Software Piracy Cost $50 Billion in 2008
According to a study by the Business Software Alliance, pirated software accounted for 41 percent of all software used on PCs in 2008, up from 38 percent in 2007.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) released the results of its Sixth Annual BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study, conducted by research firm IDC, which found both positive and negative findings.
In 2008 the rate of PC software piracy dropped in 57 of the 110 countries studied, remained the same in 36 countries, and rose in just 16. (The subsets do not add up to 110 because there is no prior year data for one country, Georgia.)
Despite the fact that most countries have falling piracy rates, the worldwide software piracy rate rose for the second year in a row, from 38 percent to 41 percent.
The BSA attributes this rise to growing PC shipments in high-piracy countries such as China and India, which tipped the averages.
The lowest-piracy countries are the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Luxembourg, all near 20 percent. The highest-piracy countries are Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Zimbabwe, all over 90 percent.
Even though the U.S. only had a piracy rate of 20 percent, it still managed the largest dollar losses from PC software piracy with $9.1 billion in 2008 purely because it is the largest software market in the world. The total monetary value “losses” of unlicensed software to piracy hit a record high $50.2 billion.
“We are continuing to make significant progress against PC software piracy, which helps people working in the IT industry as well as the wider economy and society. That’s the good news,” said BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman. “The bad news is that PC software piracy remains so prevalent all over the world. It undermines local IT service firms, gives illegal software users an unfair advantage in business, and spreads security risks.
The BSA also said that software piracy “increases the risk of cyber crime and security problems,” and gave the example of “the recent global spread of the Conficker virus has been attributed in part to the lack of automatic security updates for unlicensed software.”
The Alliance backed up its claim by saying that in a 2006 study, the IDC found that “29 percent of Web sites and 61 percent of peer-to-peer sites offering pirated software tried to infect test computers with ‘Trojans,’ spyware, keyloggers, and other tools of identity theft.”
Check out the full report here (PDF).
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The fact that software companies can afford to waste money on garbage like this study pretty much proves that they are still making far too much money.
The fact that most people who use pirate software would not have bought it if the pirated version was not available means that all these figures are WAY over the top. In fact, there are many whoo use pirated software as a Try-Before-You but system, so they end up buying it anyway. So all in all I think this is all just scare tactics and panicking by the software industry. They have got to face the fact that even if all piracy was stopped they wouldn't make much more money than they do already.
Well said TickleOnTheTum, even if they some how managed to stop piracy 100% (as impossible as that would be) they won't be seeing a 50 Billion dollar increase in profits per year.
A student who is using £250,000 worth of software is not a lost sale. It's pre-training. The company that hires the person pick up the bill.
Go after the company for money. Give, beg the lower ranks to use the software.
A company that stops skint people learning their software will go out of business in due course. An entrenched skill set is very very very valuable.
+1 for you all.
I directly challenge any software company to prove without the fluff and bullshit that piracy costs them money. As TickleOnTheTurn said, a user of pirated software was never going to buy the thing anyway, therefore it's a sale the company never had.
I agree that these figures paint a picture that makes things seem worse than they are, but I do not believe that the commenters above are correct in saying that piracy has no effect on software sales. I know people who no longer buy games, they just get them from torrents. These people would not stop playing games if pirate copies weren't available. The would actually go and but them. Fine, this is pretty small-town compared to numbers based on un authorised use of $250,000 licences, but it still has an effect. Regardless, this should not be used as a form of justification for software piracy. If someone was 'never going to buy the thing anyway', why would they be using it at all?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that piracy has no effect on sales, but I do believe the effect is minimal. I also think that we should also separate two kinds of "piracy", based on an economic effect: There is the illegal downloading, which only affects POTENTIAL profits and there is the purchase of copied games/software etc. which is a much more severe crime, with tax evasion and other legal aspects. As for the issue with those who would "actually go and buy games" as Fox Montage states, they probably would, but only 1/50th of what they play illegally. For example, in Greece, with a minimum wage of about 650 euros and a new game costing about 50 euros, it gets a bit difficult for some people to buy a bunch of games
Hmmm, I dunno as far as PC software goes I probably would not buy it if it was not availible for free, anyway there are always freeware versions of software availible anyway e.g. AVG free, Ad Aware, Google Apps etc. So I think in terms of PC programs the whole "it was never a potential sale anyway" argument is valid.
As for games though I proabably would buy more games if they were not availible for free, but I would play far less games and only really good ones compared to what I pirate.
As for music I would probably buy a CD every now and then, but its safe to say that I would not listen to nearly as many bands as I do if I was unable to pirate music. So the "no potential sale" argument is true there too. Musicians have to realise that although a pirated album means less sales of CD's it also means one more person at their next concert.
Bottom line.. software is too expensive.. besides what "loss" is there when companies such as microsoft are reporting yearly profits in the billions.. They should make legacy versions freeware for non commercial use...
the thing that annoyed me most is that the software is ubiquitous in most educational establishments - I studied medicine for 5 years, during that time it was occaisionally a struggle to afford food.
All of our work had to be word processed and our presentations on powerpoint, and the university staff and I.T. all used windows and office. It's all very well saying use the university equipment, but often that meant 2am outside of lectures and clinical placements. This is before the days when student versions and open office were available - the software i needed would have cost me almost £1000 which for myself at the time and most other people is simply unaffordable - i couldnt have paid for it even if i wanted.
Things are better these days - student versions help a lot, but even then many people will struggle.
Actually it's much worse than they calculated!! Imagine, with the $50+Bn in their pockets, just think how many more packages those companies & employees would have bought - it's got to add up to at least $150Bn easily. /sarcasm/