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 3)

Jafo

on May 21, 2005

". I know if I where to go buy a Ferrari its mine to do with as I want

Wrong.

Try putting an 'Uncle Fester' badge on it and selling it as your own creation.

Guess what? Ferrari still owns the design and any/all inherent trademarks, etc.

You can crash it into a tree all you like....but you cannot claim it as your intellectual property...that still belongs to Fiat.

unckle fester

on May 21, 2005

Try putting an 'Uncle Fester' badge on it and selling it as your own creation.

so now the subject is copy right infringement? i thought it was software piracy...

nothing in there about copy rights and i'm not stupid enough to change the name from photoshop to festers artstudio and try to sell it.

people in school, includeing some friends, that know i have photoshop have asked me to make them a copy for them. i'm not about to do that with any of my software, i had to buy it and so can they. if they can't aford thirteen hundred bucks for the creative suite they can allways pirate it.

LMAO besides, it gives me one up on the ones who don't have it. what can i say, it's a dog eat dog world out there. LOL

Jafo

on May 21, 2005

Citizen unckle fester ...amongst other things [such as property theft] warez is about theft of copyright....distribution rights.

Just because YOU haven't had it spelled out for you in the subject title does not negate its reality...

unckle fester

on May 21, 2005

warez is a program for downloading shared files and yes that is a big part of piracy. how many pirated copys of software are modified to look diferent and sold as a diferent piece of software by a diferent company? not many i bet...

Jafo

on May 21, 2005

warez is a program for downloading shared files

No, 'warez' is an accessible and unauthorised [stolen] program, either on a compilation CD or somewhere on the net.

Call it trend-speak for 'stolen property', nothing more...

unckle fester

on May 22, 2005

okay, i'll give you that. i heard of it in the past as a P2P site much the same as kazaa. your talking about copy right infringement though, not the stolen rights of use that piracy is about.

Jafo

on May 22, 2005

not the stolen rights of use that piracy is about

Strangely it's the same animal, actually...

horiz0n

on May 23, 2005

I do think the tons of the stolen software, and mostly photoshop is stolen by people that never use or know how to use it. Which if you do steal photoshop and only use it once or so a month, really no point in paying 700 bucks for it is there? Which must be why adobe is generous enough to basically give away free copies of elements.

I think the way they figured this number, or perhaps just the way they word it is flawed. 4 billion is the amount of theft, not the amount of lost sales. They could at least say lost 4 billion in potential sales. You could say they don't lose anything tangible as in an item that they sale, but they lose a potential customer for sure from each successfully stolen copy. None of the people that steal a product are goign to then buy it. So they have lost something.

But ferrari and adobe and other companies all let you take test drives. Although test driving a ferrari isn't as simple

Tarkus

on May 23, 2005

I'm probably the only guy who still uses Photoshop 5.0 LE, that came with one of my scanners years ago.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

unckle fester

on May 23, 2005

Looks to me the hole number is greater than the number quoted because it says "increasing by $4 billion from 2003". To get the complete figure you would have to add the number from 2003 and I’m not going to look it up but it would be interesting to know what it is.

More than likely it’s probably higher than the true figure just to emphasize the point. To get the true number they would have to know exactly how many pieces of software where illegal. If they knew that they would know who had it. If they knew that there would be even more overcrowding in prisons across the globe.

horiz0n

on May 24, 2005

Prisons? Not likely, since the real issue here is money I'd say it's safe to assume they'd prefer to fine everyone at 30x the retail price

Doomgaze

on May 25, 2005

No, 'warez' is an accessible and unauthorised [stolen] program, either on a compilation CD or somewhere on the net.

Jafo, Jafo, Jafo, you prove your youth.
Warez dosen't actually mean stolen/pirated software.
Its short for software.
Don't you remember BBS's? Probably not.

I saw an amazing thing in Malaysia a few years ago.
It was a copy of Windows XP Pro being sold by a street vendor.
It had the real hologram and whatnot on it.
It had a valid serial number.
Yet it was only about $5 US.

And anyhow, you've got to stop it with the car theft comparison.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
IP laws and physical property laws do NOT co-exist nor do they work together.

Jafo

on May 25, 2005

Doomgaze, Doomgaze, Doomgaze ...my 'youth' is twice your age ... so your 'proof' is fubar'ed.

Nice try, though....

Jafo

on May 25, 2005

Re the 'warez' shift of meaning...think of it like 'gay' .... in my time it meant 'happy'.

My point was that 'warez' is not a replacement for Kazaa, it's that which is got with Kazaa....

And as for 'apples and oranges', no....I was actually comparing data theft with car theft .... both IN FACT 'property theft'.

unckle fester

on May 25, 2005

heres a brand new quote this thread has inspierd me to come up with...

mastering justification is a danger we should all avoid and a lesson we should learn from when it blows up in our face...

~~~ Thomas R Johnson ~~~

circa ~ 2005

lets see what he comes up with for that!!! lol

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