p2pnet - rss feed: ‘Software piracy is rampant!’
p2p news / p2pnet: “Software piracy, rampant and hampering economic growth, is increasingly performed by organized groups regarded as legitimate businesses in some countries, results of a survey revealed Thursday. About 35 percent of the world’s software is pirated, coming down only 1 percent a year, research group IDC found in a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance, which represents about 50 software companies.”
The above is a quote from a Reuters story which goes on:
“The study, covering 70 countries representing 99 percent of the world’s information technology spending, said a worldwide reduction of software piracy by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate 2.4 million jobs and $400 billion of economic growth.”
The BSA, owned by such as Apple and Microsoft, wants counterfeiting, which it calls piracy, to be recognised on a level similar to rape, say, or murder. With this in mind, like its associates in the entertainment industries, it commissions ’studies’ which ‘prove’ how desperate the situation is. This in turn allows them to brow-beat governments around the world into using tax-payer funded police and other resources to maintain industry profits.
“A key trend over the last two or three years is organized piracy, which has become a legitimate business in some countries,” Duncan Brown, IDC’s consulting director, is quoted as saying.
However, earlier this year, when the BSA issued another IDC report which drew similar conclusions, in BSA or just BS Britain’s The Economist stated:
“The association’s figures rely on sample data that may not be representative, assumptions about the average amount of software on PCs and, for some countries, guesses rather than hard data. Moreover, the figures are presented in an exaggerated way by the BSA and International Data Corporation (IDC), a research firm that conducts the study. They dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms.
"To derive its piracy rate, IDC estimates the average amount of software that is installed on a PC per country, using data from surveys, interviews and other studies. That figure is then reduced by the known quantity of software sold per country-a calculation in which IDC specialises. The result: a (supposed) amount of piracy per country. Multiplying that figure by the revenue from legitimate sales thus yields the retail value of the unpaid-for software. This, IDC and BSA claim, equals the amount of lost revenue."
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UPDATE @ 7:28 am Pacific: The Register carried an OutLaw.com story on this and was well and truly slagged for its efforts. A Reader’s Write to our post gives a link to some of the irate letters which resulted. Here are three samples >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A 10 per cent reduction in the UK’s software piracy rate would result in 34,000 new jobs, £11bn of economic growth and a £2.8bn increase in tax revenues, according to a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance."
My Maths may suck, but if a mere 10% can create £11bn and 34,000 new jobs then, getting all over it and solving the piracy problem once and for all, creates £110bn growth, £28bn in tax and 340,000 jobs
Not bad for an industry currently worth "£25.9bn in tax revenues. It is valued at £39.8bn"
It would appear that according to the BSA we’re currently ripping off nearly three times as much as the industry is worth.
Please stop publishing this bulshit. Or at least if you are going to publish it, publish it with the respectful amount of investigation and analysis instead of just regurgitating the lobbyist junk.
Out of curiosity, why is it that the tax take now (according the the crap you published) is greater than 50% and yet if we eliminate piracy altogether the tax take is nearer 25%. Would it have anything to do with global monopolists avoiding tax by any chance?
Perhaps we should put these numbers to the revenue and see what they think.
Alan Drew
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sad to see a professional journal falling for BSA puffery just like the Times Online did.
These analyses are based on "100% conversion" - every pirate copy denied would be converted into a full price sale.
Not really very likely, is it?
Phil Payne
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Please do not report this sort of propaganda as a news story. The model used is that if piracy is reduced exactly as much paid software will be installed as was previously pirated. This is clearly a false assumption as the software is pirated by people who do not want to pay. Even more ridiculously it calculates a benefit to the economy as the extra money spent on software without any allowance for the fact that the extra money spent on software must come from somewhere else and there must be a matching reduction in spending elsewhere. The net effect could be a boost but could also be negative.
For very poor economies it is difficult to see cutting software piracy as anything but extremely damaging. Countries without good educational and communication facilities are unlikely to develop any indigineous software economy and business will either have to do without software or choose between investment in software and other things.
Even for developed economies such as the UK it is very unclear whether piracies overall effect is positive, negative or neutral. There are far to many reports like this one which are written by consultants to meet the advertising needs of clients, but have no useful content, If you reported it as such it might embarass the consultants concerned.
Alan Johnson
Also read:-
Reuters - Pirates stunting software growth, December 8, 2005
BSA or just BS - New BSA shlock horror stats, October 5, 2005
December 9th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Just look over at Register, it get funner. I some times think these at IDC might of in the past been employees of Enron.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/09/letters/
December 10th, 2005 at 12:52 am
Seriously, the back-of-the-envelope number crunch by the first letter writer was spot on.
Note to “journalists”. MS has included a calculator for your convenience. It is located under Programs -> Accessories.
Please use it.
December 10th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
“The study, covering 70 countries representing 99 percent of the world’s information technology spending, said a worldwide reduction of software piracy by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate 2.4 million jobs and $400 billion of economic growth.”
Clearly Voodoo economics. Money not spent on software is spent on something else, perhaps food. That money may even create more jobs than the jobs lost at the big software companies.
The 99 percent figure is obviously bogus and misleading too. 99 percent of the installed programs are installed in home computers and no one can know (on a world wide basis) what percent of the installed programs came with the computer, is freeware, was purchased or was copied like a rose plant from a cutting.
In the end freeware creates more wealth for the people and that is the end game of the people. Because of this, a new software copyright, compensation-for-programmers and distribution model should be created and enforced by the people, hopefully through the government they supposedly own.
BTW, if the situation is so bad, why are American software companies investing so heavily to do their software development work in foreign countries? the message is contradictory: We will export the few remaining jobs?
Or is it that Bill Gates (the wealthiest man in the world) is not rich enugh?
There is clearly a problem that needs fixing. First the people need to get the ownership of the government back. If this is not done, what is needed will not be done. But first the legislators need fixing themselves.
Here in Puerto Rico, we do not own our own government, as we are a non voting territory of the USA. We do not vote for the American legislature or the presidency. Our government is owned by either the US government and by special interest groups.
We do have a two tier (a Senate and a House of Representatives) local legislature which is totally inoperative and whatever they do is for the special interest groups (and to comply with new American laws) or is political infighting and positioning. Their only goal is getting re-elected.
Our legislators learned at Washington. Against the universal wish of all legislators and most politicians we the people forced our legislature to legislate a referendum to cut in half the legislature. We won with about 80 percent of the votes. As a result our next legislature will be 1/2 the size and one that has heard our message: Do your work or get out. I predict 75 to 90 percent of our legislators will be kicked out on our next election in 2008.
Americans voters should learn something from Puerto Rico this time.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 10th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
You know, I hate to say it but the rates here probably aren’t *too* far off. When is the last time you BOUGHT software?? I can only think of one program I have paid money for in the last 4 or 5 years…. (Not including the OS that came with the system)
December 10th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Not too far off? Are you kidding me? Anyways, to sort of answer your question I would say 98% of my software is freeware (much of it open source) and has been for a long time now. I’d guess slightly over 1% is pirated (I have a fair bit, but acutally use very little of it), and the rest is stuff I’ve purchased. The last time I bought something was a few months ago, a good inexpensive shareware app I thought was worth paying for. I don’t have anything against piracy, but even so I do always try to find a good alternative before resorting to it. If I can’t find something good for free, whether open source or not, then I’ll I may use something that is pirated, but I usually try to find something in the area of shareware first since I’d rather give money to some lone programmer that needs it than a big multibillion dollar corporation.
Now the question is whether I’m different, or the norm. Personally I like to think I’m savy, but I believe most people who have an interest in computers are of similar mind these days. Pirating software is what made programs like Photoshop the norm for example, and so Adobe (and a lot of other companies, like Symantec for eaxmple) really have to thank the pirates for their success I think. However, with the big push that is open source, I think many are realizing that not paying for corporate stuff by using pirated versions of software instead of paying outrageous fees, is not enough anymore. Sure, there is still a lot of stuff that is pirated these days if for no better reason than civil disobediance (same as with music), and sure maybe there are a few criminal rings making money from counterfeit software perhaps, but I think even pirated stuff, while available in abundance more so today than ever, can’t be thought of the same as it used to be anymore.
Anyways, I especially like the first comment regarding the calcualtor, which I also agree with another poster was spot on. Besides that, everyone knows that using a pirated copy of something does not equal a lost sale. Duh.
December 13th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
You fell for their alternate-reality trap. Just because you have software on your computer that you didn’t *BUY* (pay a royalty for) doesn’t mean it is an infringing copy.
I own/operate a lot of computers (Many desktops in my home office, many more servers as I co-manage an ISP), and not a single one of these computers have any “software manufacturing” (pay-per) software on it.
If you don’t want to pay outrageous prices I recommend you switch to FLOSS which is high quality software that you are entitled/encouraged to legally share.
File formats are the second hand smoke of the Internet age, and the more people that use FLOSS software and the standard file format the better it will be for everyone worldwide.
December 31st, 2005 at 12:34 am
The latest in a seemingly unending series of BSA Global Piracy Reports, as usual, entirely misses the key points behind piracy.
With its “Five Concrete Steps” the BSA (and one assumes the rest of the nearly 100 world-wide copyright enforcement groups) once again focuses on the symptoms of piracy, not the disease itself. These powerful groups seem to thrive on enforcement, legislation, litigation, and reactive–punitive–options.
Someone seems to be missing the simple message that the high costs of much of the software being pirated reduces the number of legitimate buyers. Want to lower the rate of piracy by 10% - lower the price of operating systems and software to match the economy of the specific regional target audience. Or maybe produce software that actually functions as the average user wants it to function. Or you could produce products that are not bug-ridden. Or…
Any of you software publishers ever heard of the Big Mac Index?
I know, I know… It’ll never work. Punish and penalize are much more profitable than educate and support. If piracy rates seriously dropped the enforcement industry players wouldn’t be able to enjoy such incredible income from their settlements. Why does the best form of customer relationship management seem to be comprised of suing your customers on a regular basis?
My real fear–and it should be yours, too–is that these BSA “studies” are being quoted around the globe as definitive–even accurate. They are being cited by everyone from news services to legislators–and laws are being passed based on these fantasy figures.
al plastow
biztechnet.org