Software Piracy Will Get Worse

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."

Comments

Re:Insightful research!

[Txiasaeia]

"The 'charities' that are collecting money for a cancer cure don't want it either because then they'd have no reason to exist."

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 be cynical about those who do.

U.S. Piracy is Insignificant Compared to Asia

[BartulaPrime]

Trust me, the US is a drop in the bucket compared to Asia-Pacific. I've been to Kuala Lumpur and they had multiple-level malls that were selling any and all software imaginable for roughly $1.25. And, it didn't matter how much the software package itself had cost, but how many CDs were used. So, it was 2 CDs, you paid $2.50. Of course, this doesn't even include the movies and music that were being sold.