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BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009
alphadogg sends a NetworkWorld.com piece going over the Business Software Alliance's latest stats on software theft around the world. "Expanding PC sales in emerging markets is increasing the rate of software piracy, according to the Business Software Alliance and IDC. The rate of global software piracy in 2009 was 43%, meaning that for every $100 worth of legitimate software sold in 2009, an additional $75 worth of unlicensed software also made its way into the market. This is a 2-percentage-point increase from 2008. Software theft exceeded $51 billion in commercial value in 2009, according to the BSA. IDC says lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into 'ailing economies.' ... In the United States, software piracy remained at 20%, the lowest level of software theft of any nation in the world. ... The PC markets in Brazil, India, and China accounted for 86% of the growth in PC shipments worldwide." The BSA president said, "Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products." It's unclear whether that was a brag about the industry's robustness, or a result of the industry's low cost of goods sold.
In not very long, all software will be accessed via the web only. No pay, no play. Problem solved.
-- Anybody here remember the Atari 800?
Clearly we can only take such outlandish claims with the utmost sincerity. So what's up, software pirates? Why are you holding us back? The burden of proof is on you to disprove any of the aforementioned claims. Until you do they are all true because the BSA said so.
My work here is dung.
Software industry has lowest per unit cost/fixed cost ratio in the world...
I believe I can smell what can only be described as first word B and second word S.
In not very long, all software will be accessed via the web only.
That won't happen until Internet speeds go way up and prices, especially for satellite and mobile broadband, go way down. Otherwise, people will switch to apps under a free software license because people can run free software while riding a bus or carpool or while living in a less population-dense area.
HAW-HAW
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
My question is always: how much of this would have been purchased if it hadn't been stolen?
Specifically, I'm referring to things like college kids downloading the full version of Photoshop. There's no way those kids are shelling out $500 (or whatever it is) for a full Photoshop license. If they steal it, they just wouldn't have it at all.
From the article, it sounds like it's a case of people acquiring alternatives to software they would purchase--for instance, Windows, or graphics design firms pirating Photoshop. I would wager that nations like China have the highest instances of these sorts of offenses, and that medium-sized businesses are the largest culprits of software theft.
I always think these are stupid, why not throw in the fact that 90% of pirated software is never actually used more than like once or twice if even used at all. Or the software doesn't even function the way it was intended to or it flat out doesn't work. How about the fact that the software most likely wouldn't even be bought in the first place so they aren't actually loosing any money from this because it would not equate to earned revenue. Why doesn't someone come out with a useful report that actually shows these facts. Douches.
Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products.
It's a good thing your products aren't being stolen, then...just copied unlawfully.
The industry could do a better job of being sympathetic, if it wasn't so obviously dishonest about its victimization....
BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B - Meanwhile...
The IT world says "security issues in Windows requiring IT or Tech work exceeds "Theft" figure many times over".
...nope, I am not complaining... I work in the tech field... as much as I would love to hate Microsoft, I have to hate the fact that I love them. I for one am thrilled that .NET and other "technologies are so easy to exploit. I'm also happy I have karma to burn ;-)
I am very curious how they come up with these figures though. At an average of $100 a piece of software, that's 510 million pirated copies a year. At $200 avg, it's 255 million copies... and so on. Wow... didnt realize it was such a serious issue...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
The BSA president said, "Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products." It's unclear whether that was a brag about the industry's robustness, or a result of the industry's low cost of goods sold.
...that your datapoints are wrong.
Seriously. They talk like people stole the $51 billion from their pockets. When you steal from a company, you are depriving them from twice the value of the item that you stole (the lost sale to you, and the lost sale to someone else for that particular item). When they claim their losses from theft, they claim the second loss (the one that's physically quantifiable). But with software, there's no physical product. If I pirate an item, they only lose my sale. I don't deprive somebody else from being able to purchase it (since copies are for all practical purposes free). And since they don't count the lost sale to me in the case of physical theft, why should they here? So nobody stole $51 billion. Total losses due to piracy === $0. Now, opportunity cost may be $51 billion (they had the opportunity to sell the person who "stole" it, but didn't), but not the loss... There's a fine line between them, but there is a line none the less...
It's unauthorized copying. And it is illegal, and it is a crime.
But it is NOT theft.
If they lost 51 billion dollars in physical product then they could say "Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products." I" more honestly
Shame on them.
And don't forget all those communists running linux! The bastards!
BSA discovers way to increase size of anus, so they can pull larger numbers out of it.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Postulate:
Units of pirated software installed != Units of lost sales.
Better questions:
How many of those using or at least possessing a pirated copy of a given piece of software would actually pay for it if it were not available in pirate form?
How would that ratio change if the software were priced differently?
If prices were lower, would piracy decrease?
How would profits change in response to the above?
Answers? *shrug*
WALSTIB!
They lost in the vicious ether eleventy-trillion-gazillion dollars from bad people stealing their software ferraris despite luckily breezing through the GFC because they had right on their side and you can't keep a good Corporate Feudalist down and if you flay the Villeins the cash will just pour in and we'll all be happier and more noble. I go now to tend my yams - the levy is due.
The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products," said BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman
Yep, you couldn't take theft either. Good thing you aren't being stolen from. Here, I'll make it simple:
http://www.gameproducer.net/images/piracyisnottheft.jpg
In my line of business, if we have a loss that we have numbers for, we put it on our taxes. I suggest they do the same. I'm sure the IRS will be more than willing to audit the hell out of them. Oops, I mean, accept their numbers without question.
... that when people pirate software they were most likely not going to buy the software anyway?
You're claiming you lost something you never really had, and never really were going to have.
I wholeheartily agree that piracy is a terrible problem, but these over inflated numbers are not helping at all. It just makes them seem a lot more desperate and a lot less innocent.
Oblivion Awaits
Sorry, it shouldn't have to be said, but it winds me up
When software is pirated, it is not permanently depriving the original owner of the item.
In the UK - "A person shall be guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it." - Theft Act 1968
I'm not educated in such matters but it seems that the US and other countries take a similar view
(Right, I can breathe again)
From Microsoft sales.
Yours In Ufa,
Kilgore T.
That's like 50 licenses for Adobe Creative Suite 5!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You'd think that marketing folks would, you know, interact with customers now and then. If they did, they'd find out that what you're saying is absolutely true.
Aside from a small number of online pundits who advocate its use, although they themselves don't have to maintain or even use such systems, everyone hates cloud computing.
Cloud-hosted systems end up being horrifically shitty. Their performance is poor. Their reliability is poor. Their usability is poor, because cloud environments are so fucking restrictive. It doesn't cost any less than dedicated hosting. Getting reliable, on-time support is nearly impossible. Data security is basically non-existent.
Data loss is a real problem, because all sensible relational techniques and ACIDity have been thrown away in favor of moronic hash tables. The only thing stupider than a cloud computing advocate is a NoSQL advocate.
Cloud computing is the biggest failure our industry has seen. It's even a bigger failure than Windows. At least Windows sort of works, some of the time. Cloud hosting never works. It's always a failure, regardless of who is using, and where it's being used.
Sorry, but as soon as I see numbers like $51 BILLION in software theft being thrown around, I pretty much immediately ignore everything that is to follow because the number, pure and simple, is bullshit. Can I prove that it's bullshit? Nope. Of course not. And that's the point - nobody can prove that it's bullshit so they can bandy it about with impunity knowing it won't be challenged. But, just as I can't prove that it's bullshit, they can't prove that it's remotely valid. And, therein, is why I ignore reports like this - when numbers can't be challenged to ensure their validity, then the person coming up with the numbers can fluff the numbers to help ensure they prove whatever point they are trying to prove.
Bullshit. Pure and simple.
It must be nice to live in a make believe land.
Don't forget Canada, we be all evil and stuff up here!
I am pretty sure you can draw a strong correlation between the fact that the average income in those countries is about 100$ compared to about 50,000$ in the USA. Last I checked a retail copy of Windows 7 is about 200$.
If your having a hard time drawing a conclusion as to why all the piracy, well your not really trying.
"The rate of global software piracy in 2009 was 43%, meaning that for every $100 worth of legitimate software sold in 2009, an additional $75 worth of unlicensed software also made its way into the market."
When did 43% of $100 start to come out to $75?
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
IDC says lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into 'ailing economies.'
You know, either that or at least prevent a large number of people from accessing the tools they need to be productive.
I'd say what is clear is the proctological origin of the number.
JADBP
Software Theft Exceeded $51B ...captialistic translator engaged...
.
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If every pirate in the world actually bought our overpriced product, we'd have had an additional $51B in sales
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That's quite a tidy sum, Mr. Bigglesworth. If it's true, where is the money? Where is that 51 billion? Shouldn't some pirates be living conspicuously opulent lives? Or are we expected to believe that this 51 billion is spread out so evenly among so many pirates that the effect can only be seen in the BSA's careful measurements?
The Internet is full. Go away.
After reading the title only, I was wondering why the Boy Scouts of America were suddenly an authority on software theft.
Isn't that like saying I lost 100 billion in lottery winnings? How can you lose money you were not going to get in the first place?
did you forget to take your meds?
Better batten down the hatches, Best Buy. How do you even make any money when something like this would take one or two pieces of software being five-finger discounted every second?
Oh, wait, you didn't mean theft. You mean being "used against license". Yeah, there's a difference, and it's big enough a judge would throw out a theft cause prima facie against your average pirate. 'Course, that isn't what the BSA sues someone for...
The idea of "stealing" information or software isn't the same as stealing physical medium. A theft of data still leaves the original owner with the data; so in the case of software when we say "stolen" really we are referring to potential sales which are being taken. However, the industry didn't lose out on $51 billion in potential sales, as that assumes every theft would have been a sale. The reality is that pirates in general pirate more software than they could reasonably afford (I have heard quotes as high as 10x the number of apps on a jailbroken iphone as a non-jailbroken one). As such, its more important to say, "what percentage of the market pirates" rather than, "how much have they pirated," as the former indicates a reasonable evaluation of the loss of potential sales.
The more people who use Linux and OpenOffice the less people will be stealing from the BSA members.
So is the BSA pushing the use of free software where people find it to costly to use commercial software?
Somehow I don't think so. But that is the real solution to the piracy.
Jut use Free and Open source software. Why risk using pirated anything?
If you really have to use a commercial product, then pay for it.
Just reduce the ridiculous cost of all software by half and the value of software theft will be slashed in one fell swoop.
So if I install and Free and Open Source OS and applications on my PC does the BSA count that as "lost sales?"
If not, why not? It would fit in perfectly with their perverse logic, and it would nicely light the blue touchpaper on all sorts of issues that would make it into mainstream politics.
Stick Men
And where do those jobs come from? There will only be new jobs if the economy as a whole is improved not by shuffling money from say DIY stores (just an example industry which will get less money if consumers buy more legal software), to software firms. And where do those $140 billion to aid 'ailing economies' come from? I'll tell you where: The asses of IDC and BSA people!
Neither. It was moronic babble as nothing was stolen. Copying cost is near zero, so if they make a good profit they should shut up whining.
These people are almost as bad as the liars and manipulators in the Air travel industry who always whine about rules of noise calculation/measurement not being just (they're always restricting them) and any new rules are bad because it would restrict them and their immense importance to the economy.
Bullshit! They're all parts of the economy. They are all small parts of the economy so a small change to them won't make a speck of difference to the whole.
The boy scouts of America are supposed to be fixing trails and helping grannies cross streets.
What are they doing policing closed-source software??
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
While I agree that a company might not survive me breaking into a warehouse and emptying it of all contents; I'm pretty sure they can recover from me breaking in and taking a picture of all their merchandise. This is just another ignorant "$1 of COPIED software = $1 of STOLEN merchandise" claim, which is is just a damn lie.
Not to say that software piracy is okay; it's just nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. Look at it from MSFT's point of view: would you rather have 3rd world countries pirate Windows XP and Office, thereby perpetuating your monopolistic control of all things business (at NO ADDITIONAL COST TO YOU), or would you rather have them install Linux and OpenOffice, slowly building momentum behind alternatives so that they may eventually compete with your software stack? I think the answer to that is pretty obvious. Fighting piracy is a balancing act, make the penalties to customers that CAN pay for the software high enough that they wouldn't want to pirate it, and just don't prosecute (most) people who can't afford it.
Maybe it's because I'm ill, but I can't see how fewer people pirating software create half a million jobs... If 10% of the people who pirated photoshop bought it instead, Abobe would create loads more jobs, not just earn more profit? Some people who aren't producing software because they're scard of piracy would decide it's OK to make it? The CD printing factory and goods delivery industries will see a large boom? As people are spending more money on software they decide they will order their own bespoke software instead of buying off-the-shelf packages? It's not immediately obvious to me how this would create jobs within the software industry, maybe in tech support and other areas.
Value FOSS softwares the same as equivalent non-FOSS packages. The piracy rate will drop to almost zero.
I wouldn't be surprised if the following calculation was used:
( (Total number of x86 CPUs sold) - (Total number of Windows licenses sold) ) x ($Cost of Windows 7 + Office) = ($Size of worldwide piracy)
So, lets feed in some numbers...
Multiply... I calculate the number at $42 billion.
Roughly the same number so I'm guessing that is exactly how the number was calculated.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
IDC says lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into 'ailing economies.'
Because everyone knows that police and regulation are the best ways to boost productivity and grow your economy! Just as North Korea, the former Soviet Union, etc.
Currently hooked on AMP
It's fascinating that in the midst of all this spin, they haven't realized that calling it "piracy" is likely to encourage the demographic containing most software pirates, and started trying to call it something else.
A few years ago, they were running anti-piracy messages before movies in my area, and when the final text came up, saying something like "Don't Pirate Movies", most of the people in the theater would yell "ARRRRRRR!"
Calling it something awesome (not as awesome as ninjas, of course, but still awesome), and talking about how well the "pirates" are doing is just encouraging them!
How exactly do they quantify this? Are businesses actually losing material resources, or do they obtain these numbers via conjecture? The math used to quantify "profit loss due to software-piracy" seems similar to the math used to quantify "jobs saved." Which is to say, filled with voodoo and hand waving. I admit, I have pirated a program or two, but I never seem to hold on to those programs very long. I can see the businesses claiming that they are losing income, because some folks have the opportunity to "try" before they buy, but I imagine a good majority of the people out there utilizing pirated software never would have paid for it in the first place.
How many goons with their own photoshopzerzz grafix would have actually paid for it? None. They probably would have done something else with their time. The genuinely indigent graphic artist, without piracy, would likely learn gimp or inkscape.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
You'll have to ensure I can't get where I want to go by using unsupported methods.
I'll be cranking out .DOC, .GIF and .PSD files until I can't run Word 6.0 and Photoshop under BasiliskII any more. Granted, I'm the sort of person who'll convert them into .ODT, .PNG, and .XCF files with open tools after that, where they may find their way into the greater 'cloud'.
The goocher here is the 'Tools Gap', where a generation will be learn remote client-server applications use vs. the way it's been since the Home Computer Revolution.
I still have access to the same Web of Internets as the 'Cloudies', and may create some of what is consumed therein, unless the door closes on external methods, which will take decades, if at all.
(And yes, there's a floppy drive within reach.)
I only pirate software that is not available in retail brick & mortar stores.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'd like to see a report from a third party that could attempt to estimate how many of the downloads would have been real purchases had piracy not been a viable option. I can imagine lots of people download Photoshop because they can, even though all they are doing is touching up photos that Gimp could do just as well.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Ok, lets talk gaming industry here. 10% less piracy does not equal 10% more revenue. 10% less piracy equals 10% less players of the games. I think the software companies are making more than enough money. More money for them will not provide more jobs, it will only provide more money for the deep pockets at the top. And that is what this is really about. It's all about more $$$ for the few.
The BSA was formed back in the late 80's, to control piracy of business software. The PC was just starting to be rolled out on office desktops in large numbers, and there really *was* a problem with software piracy. Otherwise legitimate businesses would buy one copy of WordPerfect, and install it on all 500 desktops in the company. The companies who joined the BSA rightly felt that their entire business model was threatened by the extreme level of piracy at the time.
Fast forward to today. There is still piracy, but it mostly isn't business software that's being pirated. Because of the combination of software licensing controls built into current products and threat of lawsuits, few legitimate companies would even think of using software they haven't licensed. The BSA, becoming an irrelevant victim of its own success, still feels the need to put out a few fearmongering articles every now and then to show that they're still doing something. Otherwise, their member companies are going to realize they're irrelevant, and stop paying dues.
My software has a piracy loss of over 100 Billion dollars alone.
It is software written to make sure that some stock trading idiot is triple checked to make sure that the sale is for millions not billions.
The only problem is I charge 100 Billion dollars for each software license which is only valid for 24 hours.
I know someone out there is using my software illegally so that amounts to 100 billion in piracy per hour per day per year.
If I could just force people to buy my software I could afford to let you all work for me or starve to death. Your choice.
Also I would rename every country and continent to my name. I might even buy out the entire planet to rent it to you poor bastards.
-
this very industry can:
withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products!
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because they are not worth it!
We need to charge because we want to develop better software for the customer !! sic!!
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In our company we have alone 15 major versions of XP installation images - not to count the 200 or more
patches run - more or less every week one!
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the total cost of ownership calculations of certain SW-vendors never included the cost of the patching and changes and work
to keep those bloody damned software-houses of cards whic take ages to boot - running. -
Thank you Redmoind - thank you BSA!
-
today I found again two more people who did no know about Linux and are right now delfing in the plethora of tools coming with it!
I think your average price for a piece of software is FAR too low.
Windows: $299+ (retail, not upgrade)
Photoshop: $600+ (retail, not upgrade)
MSOffice: $300+ depending on professional/small business/enterprise
AutoCAD: $3000+
Oracle: $$$$$$$ Based on their site review ("how much does it look like your company can afford")
Yeah... Every time you install Linux on a machine, then you've stolen the potential sale a Windows license that could have been sold instead.
As far as I can tell there are three major flaws in the calculation of this figure:
Firstly, it appears to assume a 100% conversion rate between "pirated copies" and "lost sales". As has mentioned repeatedly in other comments, this is impossible to justify.
Secondly, it seems to presuppose that the Average Selling Price that would be achieved in emerging markets like China and Brazil are the same as the current ASP that they get in the Western world where more of the software is purchased legitimately; this too is unsupportable.
Thirdly, they ascribed zero value to the marketing benefit of people "stealing" software in order to determine if they like it and then going on to buy a copy. Repeated studies in the music market have shown that people who download music buy more music and while the situations are not identical it is clear that many people get hold of pirated software to try it and then buy the software for the support that comes with a legitimate copy once they decide that it does the job. Killing illegal copies of software would therefore likely damage sales that they currently make while possibly bringing in some new sales.
Having run software businesses in the past I appreciate that seeing your hard work ripped off can be a serious problem but the BSA spreading mis-information and unsupportable assertions as if they are fact does nothing to make people believe that they are anything other than a bunch of self-serving scaremongerers.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
In the United States, software piracy remained at 20%, the lowest level of software theft of any nation in the world.
I'll try harder to get my percentage up for next year, okay?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
the disappearance of several very large numbers from a location within the BSA, believed, pending further investigation, to be its ass.
Nonaggression works!
I think I have been ripped off in several games last year. Hearts of Iron III was released completely unfinished. Deadspace refused to run on my machine. Empire Total War was a joke. There's a couple other games I could mention. Yes a figure on theft of around $51 billion sounds about right.
Wait, that's not what they meant?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I dream of a day when piracy is gone. When software vendors, content publishers, authors, etc are free to lock their product down to the point where it cannot be used. I dream this dream, you see, because once we rid our society of time wasting movies and television, brain-rotting terrible music, and fucked-up insecure software, we as a species might actually be able to do something useful with our existences.
So, please, BSA, MPAA, RIAA, etc. Bring it on. Make your product so locked down no one wants it. Protect your intellectual property to the point where it has no value. Die, so concepts and ideas can flow freely again.
F/OSS will move on, creating product that benefits its users rather than its shareholders, unencumbered with having to fight off patent assholes every 5 minutes who contribute nothing and demand everything. Musicians will still play music. Artists will still create art for its own sake. And the rest of humanity might awaken from our slumber and decide to spend more of our time on useful pursuits.
If we spent 1/10 the effort on science and real life that we spend as a society debating who should have won American Idol, I'd have my goddamned flying car by now. And it would run on a free renewable energy source whose exhaust fumes would be oxygen and fresh-baked muffins.
Please, for the love of (insert_deity_here), RIAA, MPAA, BSA! We're counting on you! Redouble your efforts to make your entire industries irrelevant! Get out of the way so we can evolve as a species!
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Sure, when you are charging people $2000 for Photoshop or whatever ludicrous amount they want now ... what do you expect to happen. They only gouge the price because they know businesses will pay it. But most users will never be able to afford it.
Windows 7 is over $100 for the upgrade, where Snow Leopard is $39. I really don't know many people who pirated Snow Leopard, but I know a ton who pirate Windows 7.
Make prices reasonable and you might see a change.
While I agree that their numbers are crap, what bothers me is that the article acts as a platform for pirates to get on their soapbox and lampoon at the other side - making them feel that they are "right" and the other side is just BS, as if "piracy is just fine" and "every act of piracy = one lost sale" are the only two positions. My suggestions: BSA should avoid writing crap articles, and Slashdot should stop putting them on the front page so that pirates have a shooting gallery to feel justified in the rightness of their side.
They have "BS" in their name to begin with. C'mon folks, it's not much of a stretch from there...
My only question is did the spokesperson who read the press release have their pinky touching their face?
If the rate of global software piracy is 43%, then for every $100 of software sold, shouldn't an additional $43 be pirated?
Where does $75 come from?
Switch to Debian and tell the BSA to go sod off and frack themselves.
That would be fun to film, the BSA showing up at a 100% FOSS using business -- with cops. I'd pay to see that.
The problem with most, if not all of these surveys is that they consider every pirated instance or download a loss of profit whether the person would have paid for or even uses it or not. A pirated instance of photoshop is not a loss of profit if the individual would have never paid for it in the first place. Granted there is some profit lost to pirated software but its signifigantly less than what these studies seem to suggest. That doesnt make it any more ethically acceptable but it's the truth. In my opinion this may simply a lobbying tactic to gain sympathy from law makers for more strict legislation.
I think your average price for a piece of software is FAR too low.
Windows: $299+ (retail, not upgrade) Photoshop: $600+ (retail, not upgrade) MSOffice: $300+ depending on professional/small business/enterprise AutoCAD: $3000+ Oracle: $$$$$$$ Based on their site review ("how much does it look like your company can afford")
Hmmm... Windows 7 Ultimate Full Retail is only $285, Home Premium Full Retail is $185, and only $99 for Home Premium OEM (which anyone can install same as any other copy) (newegg.com)
Your MS Office prices are also equally as skewed, as it starts at $119 for MS Office (Home and Student) and $235 for Business. All full retail copies.
You missed the:
"At $200 avg, it's 255 million copies... and so on."
At an average of $300 it's 170 million copies - and so on.
Especially because per Microsoft's figures (if 2009's are anything like last years) a very large portion (over 60% I think) of the piracy is for Windows and Office. You can find those claims here on slashdot and elsewhere... what you would need to do is look at the BSA figures for 2008, and compare them to Microsoft's figures for 2008 to come up with the percentage.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I think it's sad that most people don't realize how insanely abusive the BSA really is. I'll bet most households, and small business, would have illegal software by the BSA's extortion standards.
These reports are silly. It's impossible to tell how much of that $51B is actually lost revenue since it's unknown how many of these people would have bought the software if they couldn't pirate it. Also, it's not like it costs money to make an extra copy of a piece of software (especially if the pirates are doing it for you!), it's not a tangible object with value (aka diamonds). I know, I know, there's production costs and such but I'm sure they're making enough revenue to cover those and as I said, it's not necessarily true they'd make an extra $51B if there was no piracy.
This is all very nice and surely I'd be the first to rejoice if 500 000 jobs were created in the software business since I'm a soon to be graduated CS student.
the only problem is this : it's all based on the (wrong) fact that people actually have the money to spend on this software they hacked... which is of course stupid. Moreover even if those people were to actually purchase the software they used to hack and get for free, then they couldn't spend this money on something else and basically all the money and jobs that would be created in the software business would be missing somewhere else resulting in jobs losses..
Eventually it's the same argument the RIAA and MPAA have been using for years to explain the agony of their business by blaming piracy while in fact nobody could ever pay for all the music and movies that are downloaded illegally worldwide.
I feel bad, but at the same time I don't. These companies should be happy that people are using their software. I am referring to the large applications that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. The reason; they are using and familiarizing themselves with this expensive software and if given the choice by their company they will choose the one most familiar. Also sometimes the only way to get a copy of the software is to pirate it. Finally, there is software only technically available to a company and to get ahead in this world a rule or two shall be broken.
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
"Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products."
That's because in a theft you lose the item in question, so $123 gazillion of theft means you produced, but can no longer sell, them.
On the other hand, your $456 fantastillion in piracy means that people who didn't pay have a copy - as do you, and sales continue. That's quite a bit of a difference.
And let's not even talk about the bullshit way that they come up with these numbers. I sell software, too. I just don't live in a dream world where I believe everyone in the world is a potential customer, so every unauthorized copy is identical to a lost sale.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Where are you? Surely there must be one soul willing to stand up in this sea of apparent unanimity and shout down the hoardes of unrepentant pirates. No takers huh? Even among the hundreds of programmers there is not one of you who feels that software piracy has taken away the bread to feed their children? No takers? OK let's check the list.
Pirates - Check!
FOSS - Check
Skeptics - Check
Tin foil hat loonies - Check
Canucks - Check
Could we hear from the land of Oz, the EU, Obama lovers and bashers, AGW proponents and deniers, MS and Apple fanbois (by the way its 4:05 PM Central and I haven't seen an Apple Story yet - not complaining mind you), and someone with an "in Soviet Russia ... " comment so we can call this unanimous?
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Or how about Adobe who prices their software for stealing. That is, no average user can afford $1000 for a decent Photoshop package, so everyone pirates it. Then when a business needs a graphics package, they pony up the money for a copy because it's the package everyone knows and uses. Let's say 10 people use each copy that was paid for, therefore the real cost is $100 per copy, which is much more reasonable.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Of course, calling it 'property' instead of 'tax' makes it much more palatable in political circles.
If copyrights and patents are property, then why don't copyright owners and patent holders pay a property tax?
Software theft exceeded $51 billion in commercial value in 2009, according to the BSA. IDC says lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into 'ailing economies.' ...
10% of $51 billion = $5.1 billion
times 4 years = $20.4 billion
err... what kind of growth rate do these dimwits assume to arrive at $140 billion?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That also means that half or a quarter of all computers (depending on the figures there are 1-2 billion computers) in the world (including corporate, obsolete, laptops, servers) have illegal software installed.
Either they have a very broad range of what is "illegal" (eg. purchased the but the license lapsed and left the software on the machine) or a very broad range of what is "pirating" (what about backup copies or downloads because you lost the original disc).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Once agian the big business people are making huge claims to make people think it will change the world. Oh right 50,000 jobs created, billions dumped into the market. Get real.
At best 1% of that money gets recovered (if they are stealing it, they probably wont pay for it even if they can't get it any other way). So that means 0.1% increase in sales. The software company I work for is fairly large we have about 50 developers maybe 100 employees. Increased revenue of 0.01% is not enough to hire another developer or even a cleaning person and still make the same profit ratio. So only very large software companies hiring 1000+ people could afford to hire 1 additional person and keep the same profit margin. Likely a support person or two to support the additional 0.1% of new customers.
Since most software companies do not fall into that category, your talking maybe 100 jobs.
Now economics: To control Piracy takes money and people. So to recover this 0.1% or even being very general 1% of a sales increase, you will likely spend about 5% more money, creating a big loss. Optionally we can try to offload the cost to the government or customers, increasing the cost of our product which results in a loss of sales and lower profit ratios, or higher taxes and someone else dictating more release laws that you have to follow. All in all economically speaking it will cost more to try and get that 10% to stop pirating than you could hope to make, so not a good option.
Isn't BSA like the first call you make after being fired or "asked" to resign? I mean even before hitting the unemployment line and dusting off your resume?
I get calls about once a month from x-employees ratting on their employers unlicensed use of our software. I promptly throw the complaints in the trash bin where they belong.
Its not surprising BSA associates huge figures with piracy. As a general rule I don't accept statistical assumptions from an organization with a stake in an outcome. Its gross conflict of interest and most of us don't care enough to do the fact checking to see just how badly the underlying statistical work and or data collection was abused.
I carry a Linux Mint disc with me almost all the time. [Former Windows pirates] get legit and save money, and it easily supports what most people want to do with a home computer
Until they want to use the webcam they own (which happens not to be on Mint's HCL) or the WLAN or Bluetooth chip on the motherboard (which happens not to be on Mint's HCL).
surf the web
You can't if the kernel doesn't support your network card, can you?
a little word processing and maybe some spreadsheet work
How well does OpenOffice.org run Excel spreadsheets with lots of macros?
listen to music
MP3 and M4A are patented. Is Linux Mint licensed? Or where do you live?
a few games
Except for the ones they happened to buy, which are unrated or garbage on Wine's AppDB.
At CD pressing houses? Maybe admins of some content delivery network used to send the software to the users?
Lets face reality here, a pirated copy of a piece of software doesn't cost the producer anything unless they are providing the distribution of the software.
When I go pirate a copy of say ... Windows from my friend, he is out some time and money. Microsoft on the other hand isn't out of anything. The did not have money disappear from their bank account, they just didn't have more go in.
So lets assume there is no more pirated software, and these companies now get a portion of that 51 billion ... how is that going to create more jobs? The same people that made the program when it was pirated are still going to be capable of making it with no piracy.
I can only possibly imagine the thought is that the money would be used to create new software and thus hire people for that task, except it wouldn't. The software market is pretty much saturated already. There aren't that many NEW apps to be made, just rehashes and improvements on what we already have.
In short, I fail to see how piracy is going to effect employement rates unless someone goes out of business due to pirated software. I'd love for someone to show me an example of that happening. Enough people buy software (like companies who can't afford to dick around and get sued into oblivion for pirating) anyway, if they aren't, then your product was going to fail with or without piracy.
Products with high piracy rates are the same ones that turn in a freaking fortune in profite. God knows how many apps I've made that few people bought (cause they sucked :) and NO ONE PIRATED.
Again, I'd really like some facts to backup the FUDge packing they want us to take.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products
I can think of one: mafia protection rackets. And they survive such rampant rip-offs of their products for pretty much the same reasons software companies like Microsoft do.
You can really only have a loss if the product would have actually been sold in the first place.
If a billion machines are running DungoSoft Doornob 2100 with the exploding back orifice extensions and nobody has paid me, how much have I lost.
If the list price is 29,999.95, I could naively claim that I am out 29,999,950,000,000.00, or around 30 trillion dollars.
But the reality is that if only 1 of the 1,000,000,000 copies of the product would have actually been purchased had the user been forced to pay my assertions would be well, questionable.
Then there is the Vista people running XP fiasco. Many people are still running XP because vista was(is?) so pathetic that when they bought brand new machines, the defective fraudware shipped on them had to be replaced in order to return them to a functional state.
How much did Billy steal from us when he ripped off everybody and tried to sell you an 'upgrade' to downgrade you XP.
Imaginary theft may be over $51B but I would assert that real theft (actual lost $) is in fact less than 5% of that.
companies can't survive a 50% theft rate, but copyright infringement is not theft so it is survivable. My war3z versions are things I would never pay for. I would otherwise go without, but the companies are not losing money on my dirty copy, hence no theft
I estimate that the BSA number is 100% full of sh*t. ~:-)B
"The BSA president said, "Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products." It's unclear whether that was a brag about the industry's robustness, or a result of the industry's low cost of goods sold."
Or, it could be an open admission that they're making it all up.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They sample Microsoft customers, then assume everyone buys software at the same rate. Then they diff that total against Microsoft sales and then extrapolate to all the software industry.
In other words, people who use very little software are assume to be pirates. People who use free software are treated as pirates. People who use non BSA backers software are assumed to be pirates.
The only pirates here are the BSA, who've hijacked the truth and hold it to random.
This is a very important point that is often overlooked.
The counter-argument is that many software companies offer student discounts. Very significant student discounts. However, any student studying graphics today needs many different apps from many different vendors, they also need to upgrade each year to the latest and greatest version. So even though software is priced well for students you can easily be talking about a grand or more per year and at the same time the students still need good hardware which you can't pirate.
I pirated a lot of software while in college. I got a job and now I own thousands of dollars in software that I upgrade every 1 - 1 1/2 years. Had I not been able to find all that software for free and invested the vast amounts of time learning it I'd probably be working as an insurance broker and would not have bought any of the software I now own.
Quit paying the BSA for a service that alienates your future clientele and remember, the software that is too difficult to pirate will never be purchased by the "student" because the "student" in question didn't become familiar with it...
I actually went and RTFA, and as usual BSA (Bullshit Statistics Alliance) never states just how they get those figures. I'm surprised these people don't run for office, they'd fit right in.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
we should all know by now that Microsoft is a major partner of the BSA and we also should know that Microsoft claims that Linux included dozens of its patented software. So, I figure the BSA must be counting all Linux users in those $billions "stolen". I wonder what price Microsoft and the BSA put on Linux software.
And too bad the BSA isn't going after school systems these days like they used to. We were right at the edge of a huge chunk of the US school system market jumping over to GNU/Linux. That was just after the BSA started threatening some school systems and they then found out about LTSP and GNU/Linux and it was just before a national conference or something. Microsoft came in and told them they didn't have to pay up or something like that and most of them all went back to pushing that MS-crack to the kids. So close. So please please BSA, start banging on school system and library doors for 100% compliance with those EULAs they didn't read.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
so er, I clicked the link to this awesome-sounding article and got a empty page with a (blocked) flash advert and a notification that firefox had blocked a popup. Cheers!
I am very curious how they come up with these figures though. At an average of $100 a piece of software, that's 510 million pirated copies a year. At $200 avg, it's 255 million copies... and so on. Wow... didnt realize it was such a serious issue..
Simple. Here's how:
This post is copyright (c) Elijah W Ryel, LLC.
It is available for the price of $51B.
By downloading this post you agree to pay the full licensing price.
Presto! Now copyright infringement of properties owned by Elijah W Ryel, LLC exceeds that of the worldwide software industry by a couple of orders of magnitude.
Only a financial genius of my caliber is capable of keeping a company afloat despite such massive theft. This is just between you and me, but yesterday Bernie Madoff offered to acquire my company for $500B in recognition of just how incredibly resilient and successful this company has become. I plan on holding out for $1T because that's what any financial genius would do.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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blahblahblahblahblahITISALLEVILPIRATESFAULTblah!
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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I am very curious how they come up with these figures though. At an average of $100 a piece of software, that's 510 million pirated copies a year. At $200 avg, it's 255 million copies... and so on. Wow... didnt realize it was such a serious issue..
Simple. Here's how:
This post is copyright (c) Elijah W Ryel, LLC. It is available for the price of $51B. By downloading this post you agree to pay the full licensing price.
Presto! Now copyright infringement of properties owned by Elijah W Ryel, LLC exceeds that of the worldwide software industry by a couple of orders of magnitude. Only a financial genius of my caliber is capable of keeping a company afloat despite such massive theft. This is just between you and me, but yesterday Bernie Madoff offered to acquire my company for $500B in recognition of just how incredibly resilient and successful this company has become. I plan on holding out for $1T because that's what any financial genius would do.
Check is in the mail... :-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Every time the BullShit Alliance releases it's completely made up numbers they are not questioned by article-authors AT ALL.
just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance#BSA_annual_software_piracy_study!
their "calculation" goes like this:
piracy = number of PCs * estimated software necessity per PC - sold software
this assumes that every illegal copy equals one lost sale, this counts open source usage as piracy, it counts reuse of old licenses (from discarded PCs) as piracy, and the BSA benefits from overestimating the necessity, because more piracy means they can do more lobbying, demand more compensation from pirates, demand more effort being put on prosecution etc. just look at who the BSA is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance#Members
STOP REPORTING THE NUMBERS THAT THEY PULL OUT OF THEIR ASSES LIKE THEY WERE DEFINITE FACTS!
I really should keep a copy of this comment so I can copy-paste it next year...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I'm pretty sure software THEFT didn't cost any money. COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT may have, though.
Sorry, I was making the assumption that the Business Software Alliance wasn't looking at "home" or "student" versions of software, and using the MS pricing as I remembered it the last time I looked (Vista).
And yes, I still think that even an average of $300 is FAR too low. I suspect if you run the average up where I suspect it is, the number of copies of "stolen" software, while still probably too high, would be in the low 10s of millions - a number that I find believable on a global scale. Maybe I'm wrong, if so, fine. It's not worth arguing about.
Sorry, I was making the assumption that the Business Software Alliance wasn't looking at "home" or "student" versions of software, and using the MS pricing as I remembered it the last time I looked (Vista).
And yes, I still think that even an average of $300 is FAR too low. I suspect if you run the average up where I suspect it is, the number of copies of "stolen" software, while still probably too high, would be in the low 10s of millions - a number that I find believable on a global scale. Maybe I'm wrong, if so, fine. It's not worth arguing about.
No... no sense in arguing... but my premise was on Microsoft claiming the lions share of being affected by such "theft" - and for things like Windows and office on home computers. I didnt spell it out very well in my first post... sorry.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
It's quite simple, really: they multiply the MSRP times (1 plus the drag coefficient of the box) with the population of the US, give or take a few million times some number they yank out of their behinds (don't ask me how, you don't want to know).
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
You know, I see this kind of thinking time and time again. So many people seem to think that money just comes out of nowhere. This seems especially true with regards to government services, but it crops up often when businesses want to try and prop up their own well-being.
If piracy went down by 10%, $140 billion would go into the "ailing" (rollseyes) software economy...but it would be flowing out of other economies. Do these people think that this money is all just stuffed under a mattress somewhere, unspent because of piracy? Do they think that people don't spend the money they don't spend on pirated media on other things?
Or how about creating 500,000 new jobs? Out of nothing? No, other industries will have to *lose* jobs (likely a similar amount of jobs) to make these new jobs appear. This is because other industries are now losing billions of dollars to make up for the 10% decrease in piracy.
I'm sorry, but I'd rather see imagined losses in industries with effectively infinite supply of their product rather than real losses in industries that provide real goods and services.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Reducing piracy rates wouldn't create new jobs, the software market doesn't work based on supply and demand like that..
If the demand for legitimate software increased, the existing companies could meet that demand without having to employ any new staff therefore the only thing that would increase is their profits. They have no incentive to create more jobs, they would just pocket the increased cash.
Also a 10% reduction in piracy rates will not equal a 10% increase in sales, inevitably some of the former pirates will either do without the software or use free alternatives. I know many people who pirate photoshop because they think its the tool to have, but most of them do trivial tasks with it and if faced with the cost of buying photoshop most of them would seek cheaper or free alternatives.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So a Keiretsu of price fixing RICO violating companies sets up their own "police" department, and they whine that copying data costs them money. Maybe they should have thought about that before they based their business on DATA replication instead of SERVICE.
Fking geniuses, these guys. Seriously. It's like watching a kid piss into a tidal wave. You can't go against Natural Law, and expect to survive.
For many years, the BSA has been the source of some of the most outrageous bullshit propaganda in this country. So much so that I consider BSA to stand for "BullShitters of America". I am amazed that people still pay any attention to them at all. Their biases have been obvious and they don't even try hard to mask their distortions. Take the quote above for example.
The figures they are giving you are distorted. First, the equation of copyright infringement with "theft": they are NOT the same! Not even close. That's why they are covered by different laws.
Second, they count every instance of copying as a "lost sale". That is one of the biggest pieces of B.S. right there. According to university studies, in 90% or more of the cases of illegal copies, they were made under circumstances in which there would never have been a sale in the first place. E.g., the person didn't have enough money, or some other situation in which they simply would not have bought the product. So at least in the United States, approximately 90% of that 20% is bogus. Leaving about 2% overall.
Third, they way they calculate loss is that they count each case of copying as though it resulted in the loss of the full retail price of the product. And that's complete nonsense. Using Microsoft as an example: the marginal cost of a single copy of Windows 7 on disk is only a few bucks, even when you count Microsoft's research and overhead. And you can't count the costs of advertisement or packaging, because illegal copies come with neither. And even if it were a commercial copy of the product that was outright stolen, Microsoft still would not be out the full retail price! They would only be out the profit they would have made on a theoretical sale, which is far far less than retail.
All in all, you are being told distortions that have gone far enough to count as outright lies. These people are lying to you, and they have been for years. Don't take them seriously.
And before you start in on me, keep in mind that I am a programmer by trade. Likely it would be more profitable for me to "side" with the BSA. But I won't stand for the BS part.
Fascinating!
I would love to know what flawed research technique they came up with to arrive at a figure of 51 billion in loss. That sounds, at best, like a stretch of the imagination and, at worst, an outright falsification. If the software industry lost 51 billion collectively, why are we not hearing about more software companies going bankrupt? Hmmmm ...... I wonder if this is a ploy to lobby congress for tougher anti-piracy laws.
Seems to me that an article of this significance belongs in a publication better suited. Like the National Enquirer perhaps?
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
User frustration and non-productive downtime and repair caused by crappy software, os and bad hardware...
Priceless... uh errr they don't want to know.
I hope every one of these companies reported these huge losses to their shareholders! I'm pretty sure the SEC is quite clear about this. Looks like we'll be seeing a massive drop in stock prices too once people sell off their stakes in these dying industries....
According to the RIAA that's only a few hundred record albums. Hook them up with a few Pink Floyd box sets and call it even.
If the guy wants us to take him seriously he should have claimed 51 zillion in losses.
Pardon me... some of the things I mentioned are actually in TFA, not the quote shown.
Did the BSA bother to count the number of people going legit by using legal alternatives due to the BSA threat?
I use Open Office instead of MS Office due to the legal risk of a misplaced sales receipt or installed on too many machines. Open Office does not come with those risks. Most of the machines in my house run Ubuntu. Slowly as legacy support is no longer needed, we are migrating away from the legal risks involved with bad EULA terms.
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
How much has this story cost the BSA and Microsoft? I am not Microsoft free yet, but moving in that direction.
The truth shall set you free!
This figure of $51 billion is highly inaccurate and greatly over-inflated, though to what degree no one can say. Of course it is assumed that every case of "piracy" is akin to theft or a lost sale. This is far from the truth. Many illegal downloads (software especially, but also movies, music, etc.) are done simply to test the software, see if it will run properly one a given system, or play nice with other software. Quite often it does not meet the installer's needs, deemed to be crap, and is discarded immediately. This is only necessary because there is no legitimate way to test these things before purchasing, or to get a refund for software that just plain sucks. This would not be acceptable policy for toasters, sweatshirts, or automobiles. Even $500,000 homes come with warranties and guarantees that they will turn out to work as advertised.
One most also consider the cost of software. If piracy were not technically possible (because of working DRM, or for whatever other reason), it would still be very wrong to assume that every illegal download is the same as a lost sale. In my youth I downloaded lots of things I couldn't afford; if I could not have downloaded Photoshop 2.5, AutoCAD 12, Windows 95, Doom II, etc., I still would not have bought them because I couldn't afford to do so - I would have made do without them, like most downloaders. So in reality, most of my downloads actually cost developers/sellers nothing, since I did not steal a physical product and they did not actually lose a sale at all. I can not claim that no downloads result in lost sales, but the figure of $51 billion is highly unrealistic.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
"Expanding PC sales in emerging markets is increasing the rate of software piracy, according to the Business Software Alliance and IDC"
So, in other words, even though emerging markets are bringing millions of additional paying customers to them, they are making a fuss about the few among those who aren't paying.
Talk about seeing the glass as half-empty.
...you realise the world is bigger than the USA right? Most countries, like the one I'm in, software costs 30-100+% more than it does there, even if we legally download the software from the same location as you do.
How appropriate that this appeared just under the 'pay-what-you-want reaches 1M' post. What to do about the piracy is obvious: release software as a 'pay-what-you-want' option, and the piracy rate will drop down to 25% — that's a saving of almost 30 billion dollars!
Ask me about repetitive DNA
THEFT by software makers of the BSA reached 510BILLION
I understand why the BSA uses these stats. The BSA specifically exist to fight piracy not to advance the software industry or make money for software companies. So $51B in piracy is probably accurate. That it translates to $51B in lost sales and jobs is simply wrong. Honestly these stats make me sad. It's surprising how blind these software companies are. If it was not for rampant piracy Microsoft would not be where they are today. The market economy would simply have taken over and they would have lost. But piracy being what it was Microsoft created a empire and is now bitting the hand that feeds it. I'm very excited about that. The BSA on the other hand really gets on my nerves. The BSA are specifically hampering me in my FOSS efforts. Many clients will not accept a FOSS product because it is free assuming that I have pirated it. Even client that except it assumes that I have installed the software illegally. I've had cases where clients was told that Linux and Open Office was installed illegally on their computers and they where advised to purchase Windows and M$ Office. There is also several scenarios that disprove that $51B in piracy translates to $51B in lost sales. I'll be surprised if the lost sales is even half that. There is several scenarios where stopping the piracy would not have resulted in a sales. There is also several scenarios where the piracy aided in a sale. So the stats are a bit skew in favor of the piracy watch dog not in favor of the Software industry. As far as jobs goes. This could go both ways. But I personally think piracy probably resulted in net Job gain rather than loss. Yes we would have lost several developers because of piracy as there would have been more custom development. On the other hand because of piracy the money that would originally have been spent on software would have gone to paying salaries or even hiring IT consultants. So although it might have resulted in Software Development Job Losses. Chances are the it increased IT jobs in general as well as had a positive effect on the job market as a whole.
And for every imaginary dollar spent only 1% of that would actually be spent, because 100% of 15 year olds who downloaded CS5, wouldn't have ever bought the thing.
...you realise the world is bigger than the USA right? Most countries, like the one I'm in, software costs 30-100+% more than it does there, even if we legally download the software from the same location as you do.
Oh, I do realize that... and in others, it costs less than it does here. Certain other countries have even been offered that cheaper incentive pricing to help combat piracy - and/or free to very cheap "get legit" pricing for those running pirated software. So yes... I considered MANY other countries, while you are simply using your own as an example.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
It's quite simple, really: they multiply the MSRP times (1 plus the drag coefficient of the box) with the population of the US, give or take a few million times some number they yank out of their behinds (don't ask me how, you don't want to know).
LoL! Someone else already provided the link to Goatse.cx sadly.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Windows 7 Ultimate Fail Retail...
Fixed...
Social Credit would solve everything...
Windows 7 Ultimate Fail Retail...
Fixed...
LoL! Thanks!!! I knew I screwed something up in my earlier post!!! :-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Maybe it's just me, but I see it as bragging about their bad data.
Sad part is that I'm more-or-less a Windows fan. My opinion: XP64 is the best OS MS has ever made, or will ever make.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Instead of pumping 140 billion US$ into the ailing economy of proprietary software development, one can save $1 trillion a year with open source. Proprietary software is highly repetitive and often the innovation already has been available as FOSS for many years.
... and how much GNU GPL violation? And how much money is forbidden to open source and free operating systems because of not legitimate and digital prison alike operating systems?
I thought this number was curious, so I did some research.
Granted, it was 30-second see-what-Wikipedia-brings-up and follow the referenced article research, so it may be wildly inaccurate. Feel free to reply with corrections.
The BSA says that software theft exceeded $51 billion. Right, OK. That's simple enough to understand. Hold that thought.
They also say "few businesses could survive such a loss".
Well, I'dd add something to that.
Few countries could survive such a loss. The GDP of Hong Kong is estimated at around $208 billion. Considering how jumpy the stock markets can get over a drop of a couple of percent, I wouldn't want to see what would happen to their economy if 25% of its value were to disappear overnight. It'd be even worse in Singapore (GDP: $177 billion), New Zealand ($117.7 billion) and as for Luxembourg, they'd be completely screwed. Their GDP is $51.7 billion.
Put it this way, if there were a 100% guaranteed effective method to ensure nobody used pirated software of any description, it wouldn't add $51 billion to the coffers of BSA members. More likely that lots of companies would cease trading altogether, others would very quickly discover the benefits of F/OSS.
How many times do we need to repeat this?!
Illegal copying is not stealing or theft! - It is copyright infringement!
The only form of software theft is the theft of those plastic boxes you buy at retail stores with a program package, operating system or game inside and I seriously doubt shoplifters steal $51B worth of those...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Windows 7 is a steaming POS. How much does Microsoft charge for XP, a working product still used by millions of Microsoft customers?
However, he is right: taking a gift isn't stealing. Of course, if it was, I'd sue all the shops for stealing my money. Then I'd sue the lawyers for stealing my money too.
Tell that to microsoft. http://emea.microsoftstore.com/europe/en-US/Microsoft/Office-Standard-2007-Full-(English), http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/office/category/202
Minimal business version (Office Standard) is 485.30 EUR or 400 USD.
Original post said Retail and not OEM. OEM prices you get when you buy things together with hardware.
its copyright infringement. Idiots.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Must be a different piratebay then the one that i know of...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We also pay an intagible tax for intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, goodwill, etc.
I couldn't find anything with Google about an analogous tax in my home state of Indiana. But perhaps if California got a real intangibles tax, its Governator might be able to lean on the software and movie "industries" to pull it out of the hole that it's in.
It can't cost anywhere near what the fees are to obtain and maintain a patent for a patent clerk to review an application.
This article is not about patents nearly as much as it is about copyrights. The U.S. copyright registration fee is only $35, which is more like a title fee than a property tax.
Who is loosing money? If it's not bound it's liable to fly away in the wind!
I'd hypothesize that it's unlikely that they'd get any more than a few percentage points more in sales, and not their $51B that they're bandying about, but the bigger the number, the more hype and attention that they can generate to further circumvent existing legislation and case-law. We already know that that they're, likely, not very careful with their data gathering practices as evidenced by the GAO commentary.
They've been moaning and whinging about piracy ever since there was even a software industry, yet they seem to be doing quite well even while they pile on more and more crappily written DRM that either a) cripples legitimate copies, b) fails to work, c) interferes with other normal operation on a computer, or d) is cracked before it is even released. So now we're left with ever more intrusive DRM that simply fails to work(hello Ubisoft). OTOH there are at least some companies that use the lowest measures of DRM and tend to eventually remove it altogether, e.g. Egosoft, Bioware(well they used to before they were assimilated), etc.(thanks guys) amongst others.
Thankfully, today we now have the ever so wonderful and useful DMCA, along with what will likely, be a long yet successful push for the ACTA treaty or some variation of it. I'm just waiting for the day when they try to push for 24/7 monitoring of every single electronic device in the world, no warrants or anything else even remotely smelling of due process need apply, as we're surely moving in that direction right now.