Filed under: News
Study: 41% of all PC software installed is pirated
If you live in the US, you live in a country where about 20% of all software installed on PCs is pirated. Globally that number jumps to 41%. At least, that's the finding of a study from IDC and the Business Software Alliance.The study claims that the piracy rate actually fell in most of the 110 countries studied, but because PC shipments grew the most in countries like China and India with high piracy rates, the number jumped from 38% in 2007 to 41% in 2008.
The biggest problem with studies like these is that they try to put a dollar amount on the "losses" from piracy. In this case, the report suggests that software companies lost out on $53 billion due to piracy. But that's only true if every single individual that installed a bootlegged copy of your software would have purchased it otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's not true.
While part of the reason piracy is rampant in countries like China is because of lax enforcement of copyright laws, the average household income certainly plays a role as well. People in developing nations generally can't afford to purchase licenses for expensive software like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop. Of course, the solution to piracy might not be to convince everyone to pay up, but to convince people that open source and free alternatives such as GIMP and OpenOffice.org can meet their needs. Then problem solved. Microsoft and Adobe might not make as much money, but they can't claim they lost that money to piracy.
Yes, yes, I know. There are some things that Office and Photoshop and other commercial applications can do that GIMP, OpenOffice.org and other open source alternatives don't do as well. But I'm tired of seeing these reports which assume that the only alternative to piracy is to purchase the software, music, or movies.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
brian said 12:27PM on 5-12-2009
I'm actually surprised that the numbers aren't higher. Regardless the companies still obviously make enough money to stay in business and continue to grow. Maybe reading things like this will get them to consider opening up more of there closed code and offering more of there prized items as free downloads as a service.
Probably not but I can dream.
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Todd said 12:31PM on 5-12-2009
Would be interested to know, though impossible to account for, how much is "buyers remorse" - where a person paid full retail for an application, had a bad experience with it ( *cough*Microsoft*cough* ) then put an ISO of the install CD up as a torrent.
Also
That staggering figure ( 41%) shows what a waste of time and energy selling locally installed, proprietary, closed, OS specific software really is. If 50% of your sales are being lost to piracy, time to close up shop or switch to being a proper web app. I mean seriously, what's the point of being in business? If your OS specific desktop app cannot be converted into a prosperous web app, either your decision makers are totally clueless, or your sales staff are a bunch of crooks ( or both ).
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RUGRLN said 12:40PM on 5-12-2009
Who cares, not like they're having big losses. The companies are still thriving well, Adobe and M$ are still top, not suffering are they...
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fikhl said 2:04PM on 5-12-2009
Exactly! So what? People in developing nations "pirate" software, wow that's news to me!! It's totally ridiculous to think if they quit pirating stuff, they will purchase them in the end lol. What a joke!
M$, Adobe and others can keep dreaming...
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Scott Cook said 3:53PM on 5-12-2009
How are those numbers calculated? Unless you're taking an inventory of every machine, it's impossible to tell. More BS "statistics". If there's 100 apps on a machine and 10 of them are pay for apps and 5 are paid for is the percentage 50% pirated or 5%? You can make up numbers any way you want to and obviously the BSA is going to choose whatever way gives them a higher number.
Also how many people pirate an app, try it once and never use it again? Do you count that because it's installed? I can't count how many times I downloaded an x-day trial and used it once or twice and tossed it.
How many people given no option to pirate MS Office and educated about OpenOffice will actually buy MS Office? Probably less than a few percent.
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Todd said 2:07PM on 5-12-2009
How many people an hour just give up on Office ( with all the thousands features that go unused by 96% of people ) and just use Google Docs for free?
Ruan Caiman said 2:26PM on 5-12-2009
Thanks for at least mentioning there are alternatives. I've gotten by with the motto - "If I can't afford it, then I don't need it." Some tools I'll buy (or my work buys for me), and anything else I can get by with the OSS versions. I do appreciate those companies that have decent trial versions, or homebrew/hobbyist versions (like SoftImage's ModTool or Microsoft's Express line), and would be more inclined to use their full products.
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TheOneAndOnlyJH said 2:36PM on 5-12-2009
Even so, it's better for software developers to have people pirate their software than to have people move to the open source side. Look at it this way:
If 50% of users paid for MS Office, and 50% pirate it, that's still 100% MS dependancy. Everyone wants it because they know it's the 'standard' that everyone else is using. Eventually, some of the 'pirates' may actually be able to pay for a newer version, and MS would make some more money. I know I'd rather own a legit key, but if I can't afford it, I can't afford it. (If it wasn't for severely discounted keys through my college, I might have considered a pirated version.)
Now, if 50% paid for MS Office and 50% used OpenOffice, there wouldn't be a standard anymore. Some of the MSoffice users might think "Hey, that's free and it works just as well. Maybe I should save some money." MS could lose control of the market, and lose money in the process. Even though MSoffice has a few extra features, it wouldn't justify the cost.
Face it, MS Office IS the de facto standard. If it wasn't for pirating, more people would be forced to use open solutions which would gain popularity. But when something is a standard, you can't deny it. I've read many articles on OpenOffice where the writer said that they love it, but still use MSoffice because there are some things that OpenOffice can't do.
And it's true, large developer software from Adobe, MicroSoft, and similar companies goes through a lot of development and usually has some more features than open source competitors.
And to them, it's better to have everyone on their page, regardless of if they've paid.
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Kenn.keeper said 5:32PM on 5-12-2009
As I've stated here before,"Free is Good" but I do not condone stealing someone elses product no matter who they are. There are enough free applications for the average person to use and in some cases better than paid ones.
No matter how you want to look at it Pirateing is still stealing..........
Kenn.....
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hpavc said 7:53PM on 5-12-2009
Wasn't the BSA just recently accused of horribly inflated numbers for a number of their studies?
I swear they were tallying different bittorrent trackers and adding up the numbers of seeds and peers for the same hash and tallying the number of peers over time as unique.
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David said 6:23AM on 5-13-2009
What you said is precisely true about China. They can buy pirated software there (or buy a computer with it) for a few dollars. Companies and individuals do not have the money to buy it legally. If it were not so readily available in China, a Chinese company would create its own version, and Adobe would be out of business in China. As it stands now, someday Adobe will make sales in China, and will see immense profit there, because companies pirate the software instead of a company making its own version.
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David said 10:48PM on 5-12-2009
What you said is precisely true about China. They can buy pirated software there (or buy a computer with it) for a few dollars. Companies and individuals do not have the money to buy it legally. If it were not so readily available in China, a Chinese company would create its own version, and Adobe would be out of business in China. As it stands now, someday Adobe will make sales in China, and will see immense profit there, because companies pirate the software instead of a company making its own version.
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hazard said 6:23AM on 5-13-2009
Given the state of things 20% in the US is not such a bad figure, especially considering more software was sold in the United States than anywhere else. Added to this the fact that piracy rates fell in most countries I would say that's generally a good result.
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eddie said 8:49AM on 5-13-2009
I am not in favor of pirating software. there are too many opensource (http://alternativeto.net/) alternatives that meet my needs better. Ironically ever since we left proprietary software world for linux and bsd, we have had no problems and even had a growth in productivity. Ironically M$ is giving away w7 free for a time limited verson. I would not go back to using M$ software if you know what froze over. You would have to pay me to use their software. No more virues spyware and ohter malware to deal with. I can install an os without worrying about having a product key or phone home crap. Long live open source freedom software.
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arahman65 said 12:37PM on 5-14-2009
One of the best ways to reduce piracy: Make your products cheaper for the end-user. Micrrosoft Office is horribly overpriced right now. Just 4 apps for $50 each? How about Outlook instead of OneNote, with a >$200 markup?
Make it cheaper so that more people can afford it, and less people are gonna pirate it.
And again, try the free alternatives first. I wouldn't pirate Photoshop, as I wouldn't probably be using most of it's feature, anyway. GIMP is good enough for the average user for Photo-editing.
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Jack said 11:04AM on 5-13-2009
I only pirate things that I would never buy anyway ... like Office 2007, Acrobat 9, Photoshop, etc.
I never buy music or movies, so I download those too. I don't consider it wrong, cause I wouldn't be a customer in the normal sense. And I'm spreading their work to others, so they should be happy.
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shohag0167 said 2:34PM on 5-20-2009
Good
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