back to article Unlicensed software use 'may have peaked'

The growth of illegal software use may have peaked, according to research firm IDC. It said that if current trends continue the percentage of computers running unlicensed software worldwide will be the same in 2010 as it was in 2009. IDC has produced a report on unlicensed software use for anti-piracy lobby group the Business …

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  1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
    Linux

    Rubbish!

    "Piracy is limiting IT innovation, job creation, local economic growth and is robbing governments of vital tax revenues"

    Bollocks, given most of the software they are talking about (e.g. MS and Adobe I suspect by volume) is US based, I see little or no 'local economic growth' if they are paid or not.

    And as for tax income, what exactly happens to the money not spent on pirated goods? Kept in a tin under the bed? Or maybe spent in that local economy?

    Not that I believe in pirating software, if you don't want to pay MS, Adobe, etc then use one of the free alternatives. In most cases they are pretty good, and in doing so it helps promote interoperability, something that propitiatory suppliers tend to abuse for lock-in unless thet HAVE to cooperate to keep their market (or governments force them to).

    Tux, let him shiver your timbers.

    1. YARR
      Stop

      Refuted...

      Wrong. They are multinational companies who employ people in many countries all over the world, including thousands of people in Britain.

      Ask most people what they spend their money on if they pirate their software. Probably more expensive hardware, usually made in the far east.

      I'm all for OSS but remember the people who write it have to derive an income from somewhere.

  2. hasinkhan

    Software Piracy Drop due to ? ..

    The article mentions IDC's report that software piracy may have peaked and that we may even see a downward trend, but fails to mention cause. I feel the cause may be down to more and more use of Open Source software. The most pirated software is software that runs on the Windows platform. With the surge of Netbooks running more effecient Linux OS's which bundle a lot of destop packages there has not been need to obtain an illegal version.

    Apple were smart to charge £25 for their latest OS, this figure was low and resulted in more people paying the nominal amount and having a legal copy rather than bother with an illegal copy.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    aren't we forgetting something?

    China, India, Russia?

  4. John Lilburne
    Happy

    'may have peaked'

    Isn't that the same as saying that pirated software has reached saturation point.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But are any more paying for software?

    The increase in both quantity and quality of free software could easily account for most (if not all) the decrease in use of unlicensed software. Why bother stealing a package that is often accompanied by a load of unnecessary dross (are you listening Nero?) when perfectly viable free alternatives are more easily obtained legally. Another example I have come across recently is a group who were using pirated copies of Photoshop for the simple task of adjusting layer transparency in some PNG files. One of them discovered Paint.NET and now the whole group has converted to the legal offering.

    Possibly not what the software companies and others with a piracy problem wish to hear...

    Q. How can piracy be stopped?

    A. Give product away for free.

  6. Fluffykins Silver badge

    Could this have anything to do

    with freeware etting better and hitherto geeky thinks things like - say - Ubuntu - becoming more mainstream.

  7. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Pirate

    Because you need a Zimbabwean truck of Zimbabwean fiat money to pay for Zimbabwean Windows

    "Piracy is limiting IT innovation, job creation, local economic growth and is robbing governments of vital tax revenues."

    On the contrary. So-called "Piracy" is fueling IT innovation, creates jobs, fuels local economic growth and thus increases governments' vital tax revenus (which it can then throw away in War On Stuff etc. so the actual "Piracy" is not where you would think it is.)

  8. Mage Silver badge

    Beacuse

    People don't want Vista, Win7, Office 2007, Office2010?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yeh, but...

    How much of that has transferred to open licensed software?

  10. chr0m4t1c
    Coat

    Question

    Do these figures include, oh I don't know, lets say donated PCs that have been re-formatted and re-loaded with Windows?

    You know, those ones that were licensed but can only be re-loaded with the copy that came with the machine, not just a copy you happen to have - even though it's the same software?

    In other words, how many of these infringing machines in developing countries are not really unlicensed, except on an unreasonable technicality?

    Just asking...

  11. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    I have just one question

    How do they know?

    1. rciafardone
      Boffin

      They make an "educated" guess...

      Actually it is a mathematic trick, sort of making up the numbers without totally pulling them out of your arse, since it is impossible to count the number of pirated OS or the number of pirated apps running on either legal or pirated OS.

      For OS is relatively simple. You can get a pretty good approximation on the number of computers sold, either full or in parts, simply by learning the max number of motherboards (using processors would be trickier, since there are MB that support multiple processors). Since you know how many computers “may” exist in the market of a country, then all you have to do is add up all the known numbers for legal OS sold, preinstalled or in the case of distros like Ubuntu, how many downloads are there (you can even be more precise by checking how many computer download the updates for these OS as to prevent double counting people that downloaded the same system multiple times). You compare those figures and you get a good approximation of how many pirated OS are out there.

      Now for apps, like games, is way harder. In fact the numbers are probably overblown by an order of magnitude if not more. There are only 3 sources to make the guess and all are way imprecise, 1 is monitoring traffic for downloads, witch with p2p programs is crazy; 2 is checking local authorities estimates on street sales, with is even more crazy; 3 is the estimates of a publishers for an app sells compared to the actual sells compared to the estimates of the people using the app, this is total BS from all angles. There is tecnic number 4… spying, but this is just as unreliable and quite illegal if I am not mistaken.

      In conclusion, it is all pretty inaccurate, probably with an error way over 10% (I am totally making that number up, but who isn’t?). It would be sad if publisher actually believe it is thanks to their DRM policies that piracy “is picking”, cause is not, remember, all it takes is a single lonely cracked copy for the floodgates of piracy to be open wide, and it takes like 48 hours in average to crake the harder DRMs… so make the math…

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Software Piracy Drop due to ? ..

    Has anyone here tried to get a pirated copy of software without it being full of malware recently? I used to use pirated software but not any more. A "friend" of mine recently tried to update an old pirated software product. Every copy he tried (7 or 8) contained malware if not in the release itself then in the associated keygens or patch files. In the "old" days the crack teams used to publish pirated software just for the kudos of being first but now how things have changed. I suspect that many of the old teams either got caught or just got fed up with all the f'wits and left the scene. I also believe that Bit Torrent has a lot to do with it. In the past you needed a certain technical ability/savvy to use Usenet but Bit Torrent changed that. It became much easier to share and download files. So it increasingly fell under the malware suppliers microscope.

    So I've stopped using pirated software. These days it's just too much of a risk to my system. Have I gone out and bought legal copies of the software I pirated? No, I haven't. The reason being that I only ever used the stuff for non commercial use and just cannot justify the cost of the packages. Like many people who downloaded Photoshop for example, I only ever used a tenth of it's functions so these days I either use very old versions of the product or Gimp/Picasa.

    So my point..

    One of the reasons that piracy may have dropped is that the real or perceived threat of installing malware onto a system when using a pirated source has put people off using it.

    No one to my knowledge has brought this up before. Maybe, because to mention it you have, by inference probably have used pirated software in the past.

  13. Nick Kew
    Boffin

    Methodology

    Someone should cast a critical eye over their methodology.

    Oh wait, someone has: http://itreallyisupsidedown.blogspot.com/2010/05/yo-ho-ho.html

  14. G C M Roberts

    A title...

    Does it really matter that much what the piracy rate is in a lot of non-western countries given that software is not sold at a flat price (FX weighted) and in China or elsewhere 200USD/200GBP/200EUR (spot the first imbalance from a consumer PoV) software is sold legit for say 20GBP etc?

    Cheers,

    G

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  16. The Flying Dutchman
    FAIL

    You read it here first:

    "Plausible Deniability" (C)

  17. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Yeah Right...

    >IDC has produced a report on unlicensed software use for anti-piracy lobby group the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

    Its not like the BSA folk need to justify their salaries by proving how effective they've been, in a time when the softies writing the cheques are throttling back on funding.

    I wonder what was the more effective use of MS pennies, WGA or BSA?

  18. mego
    Jobs Horns

    It's fun

    To play with numbers. Hey, last year I earned 50% of Microsoft's GNP! Yeah, serious. In other news, some associations like to pull figures out their intestinal exit wound.

    I don't know what makes me laugh more. The fact that the ones bleating about piracy (ooo do we go there - I think not) are the same that wouldn't have a job it it got solved, or the fact that all the firms involved with the BSA probably wouldn't even miss a couple million here or there....doesn't seem to figure in this "report".

    A little biased and maybe weighted heavily with guesswork what?

    1. rciafardone
      Coat

      It is not a wound...

      It is not a wound. You should say orifice or sphincter.

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