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:I do not condone piracy but...

[zippthorne]

Only ignorant college students pirate software. My university library has apparantly purchased some kind of site license which allows students to install software (as long as they don't copy the library's disk) According to the librarians (and the legal notice on the list-o-programs), there is no requirement that the software be deleted upon returning the disk to the library, which is good for students because the offering includes a version of windows XP and Office XP, which they would obviously need for not less than an entire semester. Mine is one of the smaller colleges, so i can't imagine that other universities aren't doing the same thing.