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

Growing Trend?

[lecithin]

"software piracy will continue to expand as the Internet grows"

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=123 49249

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.

Estimated

[sandman935]

I'm more than a little tired of hearing how much the recording and software industries THINK they're losing. They don't know.

"while United States"

[mindaktiviti]

I think the United States is much lower probably because of companies like Dell. If everyone would put their computer together nobody would want to spend an extra $200 for an OS where that money could go for a new video card. I wonder how much smaller MS' revenue would be if the norm for purchasing computers would be through parts (just theoretical, I know that wouldn't happen because it'd be too much fo a hassle for joe sixpack).

Also, I know of one great way to battle piracy. :) Use Open Source! :D

Price it right and it gets copied less

[Nf1nk]

The most commonly copied software I hear about are.
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)

Zimbabwe ?

[bushboy]

Zimbabwe barely has food enough to feed it's populance, who number such a small amount ?

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:Crazy predictions

[ThosLives]

You're right that their numbers don't make sense. The one assumption they have is that they could sell the entire volume out there at its current price to come up with the "value" of pirated software. This is fundamentally flawed, as the value of the software that is currently pirated isn't the price of the software, it's the risk involved with the piracy. I've said it before, but it's not possible to claim damages based on unpurchased resources - especially when the resources are not scarce.

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:Prices

[Vellmont]

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.