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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.
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.
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.
Yeah, half-a million jobs for India and China.
As an unemployed American software engineer who was laid off from Microsoft after our project development was offshored to India -- fuck 'em, I say. The Pirate Bay is providing me with the latest in cracked, malware-free installs of Windows 7 and Server 2008. I run Linux at home, but I sell the Windows discs to high school kids for five bucks a pop. Great for beer money.
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 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."
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.
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)
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.
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?
Sorry, but the math is still wrong.
First, the actual amount of money lost by the software industry is very close to zero. As in ZIP ZILPH NADA NOTHING. This is because piracy does not equal lost revenue:
1 - There is no software so important that you can't live without it (this also applies to movies, music, etc)
2 - A substantial portion of the population will never buy your product. Never. If they can get it for free they will take it, but otherwise they will simply do without it (see number 1)
3 - Because of points 1 and 2, uncrackable DRM/Copy Protection would produce no significant increase in revenue -- certainly nowhere near the absurd number claimed by the BSA.
Second, even if you eradicated piracy and the software industry really did realize increased revenue of $500 Gazillion dollars (US), the number of jobs created would be very close to zero. We're not manufacturing widgets here. If sales of Photoshop increase sharply they don't need to hire more programmers.
If you put $51 Billion into the system
Except you don't put $51 Billion into the system, you take it from elsewhere. Which means 500K to 1M jobs are lost in other industries, with the funds transferred to the software industry.
Copyright and other IPR are fundamentally taxation systems. They artificially transfer funds from one place in the economy to another; saying $51B more to IPR industries creates more jobs is equivalent to saying that $51B more in taxes would create more jobs.
Of course, calling it 'property' instead of 'tax' makes it much more palatable in political circles.