Study: More than a third of PC software pirated

Published on May 19, 2005 By Island Dog In Personal Computing

More than a third of the software installed on PCs worldwide during 2004 was pirated, with losses from unauthorized software increasing by $4 billion from 2003, according to a study released Wednesday by the software trade group Business Software Alliance (BSA).

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Comments (Page 2)

NightTrainthedark

on May 20, 2005

If I steal someones Ferrari. Their insurance company buys them a new one, resulting in another sale for Ferrari.

_02

on May 20, 2005

If I steal someones Ferrari. Their insurance company buys them a new one, resulting in another sale for Ferrari.

And higher premiums for insurance customers.

ZubaZ

on May 20, 2005

Stealing software is the same as shoplifting software.
My kids think I am an evil parent because I don't let them burn music they don't own. And I don't care.
Whether there is a lost sale or not, whether it's overpriced or not, someone wrote code expecting that it would generate income. A user who steals that software knows that the developer (distributer, manufacturer, whoever else is in the supply chain) is expectign payment and is choosing to withhold it. It's wrong.
And I think that the legal users of software pay a little more to make up for the know loss though theft. Steal less, and the price may drop a bit.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

ParaTed2k

on May 20, 2005

Yes, pirating is stealing, I'm not trying to justify pirating at all. However, if I did pirate a game, and played it, then dumped it how did the software company lose anything? If I bought it, played it and dumped it, sure, the software company made money, but now I am out the price of the software. Because of the rediculous copyright laws, I can't even return the piece of crap game.

Yes, the owner of the copyright is the software company, but let's face it, software copyright laws have no basis in logic. I can't return a piece of crap game. I can't try it out before I buy it, I can't put the same game on more than one system, even if I own all the systems, I can't take the game to a friend's house and play it with them, I can't do crap.

Music is copyrighted also, but once I buy the CD, I can download copies of the music to my heart's content. I can play it on whichever machine I want. I can make copies for my home stereo, my car, my bedroom CD player, my portable CD player and anything else I own. I can take it to a friends house and we can listen to it together, and as long as I don't give him or her the copy, I'm still completely within the law.

Yes, pirating is stealing, but so is the dishonest way the software industry does business. If you ask me, their isn't an honest person in the lot, and for them to point their stinky finger at pirating is a huge case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Zoomba

on May 20, 2005

I'm going to have to jump in with Ted and Co. on the "bad analogy" bandwagon.

But first... piracy is stealing, stealing is bad, if you are caught pirating you should be punished in line with what you would get for stealing a copy off a store shelf.

I write program X. I sell and distribute program X. Someone pirates program X and does not pay me. I have lost a sale *maybe*, not all pirated software would have been purchased otherwise, but lets say I lost a potential sale. I still have program X and can continue to sell and distribute it. If the software is pirated online, I'm not even out the cost of packaging and materials of a store copy. I've lost the Cost to Develop / Estimated Total Customer Base. For something like Microsoft Office, that number gets pretty damn small (though still a legitamate loss).

I manufacture a car. I sell said car. Someone comes in and steals the car from my lot and does not pay me. I have lost a sale *definitely* because while that person may not have bought the car otherwise, chances were extremely high someone else would have come along. I now no longer have posession of the car. I can't sell it PERIOD now. I am out the partial cost of design, as well as 100% of the cost to build the car, materials, labor, everything. I have no way of recouping the cost on that loss without raising the price on all of my other cars to absorb the expense.

Software is a create once, sell many item. In the instance where physical box copies aren't being snagged off of shelves, it's very hard to quantify the actual value of the loss. Physical products on the other hand are produce once, sell once item. If someone steals your car, or a CD or a toy off a shelf, that particular object can not be sold again by you (unless it's returned). While both results in some loss of income (one disproportionately higher than the other) and both are wrong, they're not the same, and you can't really compare them as if they were.

Methods for estimating loss to piracy are dicey at best. Discarding the argument of "they wouldn't have bought it anyway", you still have the issue of Moma and Poppa Smith buying a copy of Office, but have two machines at home so they install it on both. Or cases where people buy a machine without windows installed (a lot of stats use # of copies of windows sold vs # of PCs sold, ignoring that many PCs may be ordred without Windows bundled). This is something with so many variables, that statistical analysis really doesn't work too well. The only way to get an accurate picture is if they were conducting audits and then using the values from those corporate audits as a way to come up with a number. Surveying individuals won't work here. It's not like an election poll.

Then there's the way they claim damages from piracy, which IMO is completely and absolutely ridiculous. I steal a CD from a music store, I have to pay some sort of fine probably not much in excess of the cost of the CD, maybe upwards of a hundred dollars or something just to teach me my lesson. I download a CD online and I can be hit for a few hundred thousand dollars PER SONG!?! Same with software, I get hit not with a punishment that scales with the crime, but one that shoots the moon in terms of "estimated losses" Then there's the jail time. You're not going to do hard time for stealing a box off a shelf... but you could face several months to several years in jail for pirating that same thing. It's getting to the point where you would be better off getting stopped in a drug bust than being caught with a CD of downloaded music.

The assumptions and methods in determining the value of loss to piracy is skewed beyond belief right now. You have the BSA, RIAA and MPAA going bat-shit over this stuff, filing against individuals for thousands of dollars per song or movie they pirate... it's ridiculous. I'm all for punishment for piracy, but it should be in line with the punishments for shoplifting. Same result, should be same punishment.

This doesn't even touch the issue of companies releasing software they know doesn't work as advertised/has bugs/doesn't run on the min specs/doesn't have real support etc... The software industry is worse than the airline industry in terms of crappy return on what you spend.

Jafo

on May 20, 2005

software copyright laws have no basis in logic.

Yeah, right.

You'd 'like' to think that.

And 'thou shalt not kill' is archaic English....doesn't make it any less valid, darling...

It's Friday night here in Oz....I've had a long week of dealing with Architecture as well as protecting artist's/skinner's copyrights here on Wincustomize.com, and am mildly merry on the odd red wine or three but am STILL more rational and logical than 'some' of the arguments here.

Keep trying, kids, but you won't convince anyone with a brain, only your peers.....

_02

on May 20, 2005

But first... piracy is stealing, stealing is bad, if you are caught pirating you should be punished in line with what you would get for stealing a copy off a store shelf.

I believe it comes with a higher cost, and justifiably so. In the States it is a Federal Crime. As long as people think it's alright to take what is not given to them, or what does not belongs to them, the rest of us will contiue to pay higher and higher costs. That is the simple truth. Go ahead, keep telling yourself I am not stealing. And those of us who have to keep paying the higher costs will continue to know that you are.

gef

on May 20, 2005

So - who's got the Ferrari ?

1ke us

on May 20, 2005

Well-put, Zoomba.

The anti-piracy witchhunts and the general tone of the movement recalls McCarthy's paranoiac crusades and prohibition-era panicking all at once. It's knee-jerk policymaking and it'll die down eventually. The use of excessive penalties for white-collar crimes is a scare tactic, and a damned good one. It works, it's leverage, crowd control. Take ten random transgressors and put them up against a wall and shoot them, tell you you're next; chances are you're going to change your behaviour. But once we figure out the actual enforcers of our laws are too busy with public safety and important matters and don't give half a shit if you're sitting there violating some company's copyright, we reach a kind of stalemate; you stop hearing so much hue and cry in the media about it, people stop talking about it, and companies focus on improving their product to the point where it's so damn good you'd never even dream of stealing it.

* * * * *

Jafo

on May 20, 2005

companies focus on improving their product to the point where it's so damn good you'd never even dream of stealing it.

Crap yet again.

The kiddies will just trip over themselves trying to steal it faster.

Tarkus

on May 20, 2005

... It's a loss of $10,000 of property belonging to the software company.....sales is immaterial.
A stolen car is not a lost sale either, if that's the case.
It's a perfectly good analogy.
Property is obtained without payment.
What, how or why is irrelevant.

I give up. There's only so much beating my head against the wall I can take.

craeonics

on May 20, 2005

*cough*youdon't"own"softwaretobeginwith,youlicenseit,soit'snot"property"*cough*

craeonics goes fix the hole in the wall

unckle fester

on May 20, 2005

What I see is this...

people go to a store to "buy" software but what they are really buying is not the software, they are only buying the right to use the software... so... what it comes down to is... it's not the software being stolen, it's the "rights" of use that is being stolen! The comparison of the Ferrari being stolen is not a viable comparison because when you buy a Ferrari you get a Ferrari not just a "right" to use a Ferrari!

Stealing is wrong, granted, software piracy is partly the fault of the companies because of the way they sell it to the public as "buy the software" when they should be saying "buy the rights to use my software". I know if I where to go buy a Ferrari its mine to do with as I want weather I sell the original wheels I replaced or what ever.

lets say someone has a company and buys a vehicle that anybody can use for company business, not a concern of the automaker but, if a company buys a piece of software that everybody needs to use for company business, the software company wants to make sure said customer also buys the right for all employees to use it just because they have separate work stations. Good thing they're not required to buy a separate vehicle for each employee to use (any ones blood pressure jump just now?) as this would cut across the grain of what we know and understand, just as the way software is sold/licensed.

Yes, there are thieves in the world of every kind. Some steel Ferrari's, some steel the right to use a piece of software. This is a part of life as we know it in the modern world and probably not going to change in my life time. But it's my opinion that a large part of this piracy issue is the fault of the software company’s terms of use policies that just don't fit the way society views purchasing. When we go to the store and buy anything we expect to own it. But when we go and buy software we're not aloud to own it in the way we think we should own it and this is what I see as the biggest part of the problem.

So what this brings me to is an understanding that software piracy is mostly because of the fallout of corporate greed and partly because of human nature to keep up with the Jones’s.

In the near future I plan on building a new PC and will probable use the same programs I use on this one that I plan on giving to my child. Do I see this as wrong? No! I did pay for it and I consider it mine. I see the requirement of replacing all of it for my future computer as ludicrous. I will not remove it because I want my daughter to experiment and learn to use some of it. She is a nine year old with downs syndrome and she tries to use Photoshop like her dad does. Will I keep it from her or help some over paid executive buy a third Mercedes so he has one more than the guy next door? I think not!!!

If that makes me a PIRATE than so be it!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

~~~FESTER~~~

ParaTed2k

on May 20, 2005

Yes, it is stealing, but the scum software companies bring it on themselves.

ryvon

on May 21, 2005

My only comment is. Where do all of you see this conversation going? In all cases all are right and all are wrong. Each of you has one little peice of a much larger puzzle. Its very simmilar to dealing with illegal aliens in the united states. You cant keep track of them, they commit crimes, they do damage to property, the don't pay taxes, they don't have insurance, they cause higher health care premiums, etc. But if you get ride of them, then the entire construction industry in the US would completely shut down. Not to mention alot of the auto industry, fast food (dishwashing and other) They fill millions of jobs in the US that the US citizens are too proud to take.

Perhaps its not what is wrong you should be looking at but how the right. How many more software licenses are sold each year because the person who bought it knew someone who pirates (and most pirates know their software) how many of them bought the software because they trusted someone who knows it.
Do any of you care to see how it helps the industry. I do admit that it does alot of damage, but you have to be willing to look at both sides of the picture. If anyone is limited to only one view on things you are being decieved, either by others or by yourself.

Moderation in all things my friends. Seek information not opinion.

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