BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009 350
alphadogg sends a NetworkWorld.com piece going over the Business Software Alliance's latest stats on software theft around the world. "Expanding PC sales in emerging markets is increasing the rate of software piracy, according to the Business Software Alliance and IDC. The rate of global software piracy in 2009 was 43%, meaning that for every $100 worth of legitimate software sold in 2009, an additional $75 worth of unlicensed software also made its way into the market. This is a 2-percentage-point increase from 2008. Software theft exceeded $51 billion in commercial value in 2009, according to the BSA. IDC says lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into 'ailing economies.' ... In the United States, software piracy remained at 20%, the lowest level of software theft of any nation in the world. ... The PC markets in Brazil, India, and China accounted for 86% of the growth in PC shipments worldwide." The BSA president said, "Few if any industries could withstand the theft of $51 billion worth of their products." It's unclear whether that was a brag about the industry's robustness, or a result of the industry's low cost of goods sold.
Don't worry, they are working on a solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Smell something? (Score:1, Insightful)
I believe I can smell what can only be described as first word B and second word S.
Due to poor ISPs, that would only promote FOSS (Score:3, Insightful)
In not very long, all software will be accessed via the web only.
That won't happen until Internet speeds go way up and prices, especially for satellite and mobile broadband, go way down. Otherwise, people will switch to apps under a free software license because people can run free software while riding a bus or carpool or while living in a less population-dense area.
I hate these Reports (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry, they are working on a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, half-a million jobs for India and China.
As an unemployed American software engineer who was laid off from Microsoft after our project development was offshored to India -- fuck 'em, I say. The Pirate Bay is providing me with the latest in cracked, malware-free installs of Windows 7 and Server 2008. I run Linux at home, but I sell the Windows discs to high school kids for five bucks a pop. Great for beer money.
To make the point yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good thing your products aren't being stolen, then...just copied unlawfully.
The industry could do a better job of being sympathetic, if it wasn't so obviously dishonest about its victimization....
Theft != Piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
News flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
BSA discovers way to increase size of anus, so they can pull larger numbers out of it.
Re:The horse is dead, Jim! (Score:3, Insightful)
Postulate:
Units of pirated software installed != Units of lost sales.
Better questions:
How many of those using or at least possessing a pirated copy of a given piece of software would actually pay for it if it were not available in pirate form?
How would that ratio change if the software were priced differently?
If prices were lower, would piracy decrease?
How would profits change in response to the above?
Answers? *shrug*
Additional important question:
How many copies of the software were sold because someone was exposed to it through a pirated copy?
Customers and users hate the cloud. (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that marketing folks would, you know, interact with customers now and then. If they did, they'd find out that what you're saying is absolutely true.
Aside from a small number of online pundits who advocate its use, although they themselves don't have to maintain or even use such systems, everyone hates cloud computing.
Cloud-hosted systems end up being horrifically shitty. Their performance is poor. Their reliability is poor. Their usability is poor, because cloud environments are so fucking restrictive. It doesn't cost any less than dedicated hosting. Getting reliable, on-time support is nearly impossible. Data security is basically non-existent.
Data loss is a real problem, because all sensible relational techniques and ACIDity have been thrown away in favor of moronic hash tables. The only thing stupider than a cloud computing advocate is a NoSQL advocate.
Cloud computing is the biggest failure our industry has seen. It's even a bigger failure than Windows. At least Windows sort of works, some of the time. Cloud hosting never works. It's always a failure, regardless of who is using, and where it's being used.
Re:Lost sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup - "IDC says lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into "ailing economies." "
The question is - WHERE would that money come from?
Chances are, if somehow forced to "go legit" on a particular piece of software, rather than cough up the money, people in third-world countries would instead:
1) Choose an OSS alternative
2) Choose a more reasonably priced commercial alternative (PSP instead of Photoshop for example)
3) Choose no alternative, i.e. choosing to simply forgo that functionality altogether
Re:Don't worry, they are working on a solution (Score:2, Insightful)
In not very long, all software will be accessed via the web only. No pay, no play. Problem solved.
That will be fun for those of us in airgap environments with no connection to the internets.
Isn't that like saying (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that like saying I lost 100 billion in lottery winnings? How can you lose money you were not going to get in the first place?
Do your bit to avoid piracy use free software (Score:4, Insightful)
The more people who use Linux and OpenOffice the less people will be stealing from the BSA members.
So is the BSA pushing the use of free software where people find it to costly to use commercial software?
Somehow I don't think so. But that is the real solution to the piracy.
End all software piracy now... (Score:3, Insightful)
Jut use Free and Open source software. Why risk using pirated anything?
If you really have to use a commercial product, then pay for it.
Re:Don't worry, they are working on a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you put $51 Billion into the system and the net result is 500,000 new jobs, you're talking half a million jobs at $102,000 each! Even with benefits, you could hire an American for that,
Your math is wrong, let me help you:
500,000 jobs x $13,000 for Indian workers = $650,000,000 in wages.
$51,000,000,000 - $650,000,000 = $50,350,000,000 in dividends for shareholders and bonuses for executives
Re:Let Me Add to the List; I'm Good at This Too (Score:3, Insightful)
In 2009, Michael Jackson's last words were "End software piracy" as the stolen copy of Windows XP that regulated his IV's drip failed because he had just passed the 30 days he had to authorize his copy.
Except, you know, only non-pirated versions suffer from this flaw. Unless that copy was literally stolen, that is -- but I have yet to hear about a case when someone actually pilfered boxed software.
Re:Customers and users hate the cloud. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Would the IRS accept this writeoff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most definitely not. Allow me to explain: If a product in inventory is stolen, you, i.e. the company that owned the goods, can write off the cost of goods associated with that product as a loss from theft.
Similarly, if a person owns a car and it's stolen (and not replaced by insurance), they can write off the depreciated value of the car at the time of its theft.
But you can't write off losses associated with products you didn't actually make because somebody illegally copied your software.
Just like you can't get a tax deduction for "donating" unpaid services (because you'd have to record pay for them, i.e. income, then take a deduction for a donation - net tax impact is zero). However, you can potentially write off other expenses actually incurred as part of a charitable endeavor.
So if you had a bunch of software, in boxes, ready to ship to stores, stolen from your warehouse, you can deduct the cost of replicating the CDs, printing the boxes and so on. But you can't deduct the retail or even wholesale price of the software units stolen.
Since there were no direct costs associated with producing the copied items in this case, you can't deduct them.
Otherwise, everybody would "lose" stuff to theft all the time for the tax benefits. And Uncle Sam isn't *that* stupid. There are certainly tax loopholes out there, but they require a bit more cautious execution to benefit from, or they tend to get legislated away eventually.
Re:Let Me Add to the List; I'm Good at This Too (Score:3, Insightful)
Shoot a policeman
then steal his helmet
then go to the toilet in his helmet
then send it to the policeman's grieving widow
and then steal it again
The whole point of value added product is that it is easier for the consumer to buy the product rather get it in another way. For instance I often pay 6X the amount for a soft drink because it is easier to buy a small cold bottle than carry it around. Am I stealing money from coke when I buy a big bottle and keep it a cooler? Likewise, many families buy various pastries instead of making them at home, at a fraction of the cost. Would these families be stealing when they use their own time to make the pastries rather than paying the excessive store prices?
Sales stats show that the industry understands this reality. Most firms are making products people will choose to buy. Some are trying to legislate closed market rules to protect their obsolete products, but fortunately, as we see in the video, they are rightfully and increasingly ridiculed.
Re:For the last time... It is not "theft" (Score:1, Insightful)
Copyright infringement isn't theft, it's copyright infringement.
"You wouldn't steal a car..."
I may not, but in telling me they are happy to steal electricity from me
Unskippable ads are stealing!
Re:Don't worry, they are working on a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but the math is still wrong.
First, the actual amount of money lost by the software industry is very close to zero. As in ZIP ZILPH NADA NOTHING. This is because piracy does not equal lost revenue:
1 - There is no software so important that you can't live without it (this also applies to movies, music, etc)
2 - A substantial portion of the population will never buy your product. Never. If they can get it for free they will take it, but otherwise they will simply do without it (see number 1)
3 - Because of points 1 and 2, uncrackable DRM/Copy Protection would produce no significant increase in revenue -- certainly nowhere near the absurd number claimed by the BSA.
Second, even if you eradicated piracy and the software industry really did realize increased revenue of $500 Gazillion dollars (US), the number of jobs created would be very close to zero. We're not manufacturing widgets here. If sales of Photoshop increase sharply they don't need to hire more programmers.
Re:Do your bit to avoid piracy use free software (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean, lets assume that in the next year 50% of people currently using pirated software switched to free alternatives. The number of detected pirated copies halves, the sales don't go up a penny. Do you *honestly* think the BSA will say "piracy was reduced by 50% last year, we hope this continues indefinitely"? No, they'll note that their revenues didn't go up and conclude that people have switched to a less easily detectable form of piracy. Or they'll try to bully people into switching away from free alternatives with threats of lawsuits based on patents.
Re:Don't worry, they are working on a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you put $51 Billion into the system
Except you don't put $51 Billion into the system, you take it from elsewhere. Which means 500K to 1M jobs are lost in other industries, with the funds transferred to the software industry.
Copyright and other IPR are fundamentally taxation systems. They artificially transfer funds from one place in the economy to another; saying $51B more to IPR industries creates more jobs is equivalent to saying that $51B more in taxes would create more jobs.
Of course, calling it 'property' instead of 'tax' makes it much more palatable in political circles.
Re:News flash! (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.goatse.cx/ [goatse.cx]
Re:Lost sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but what you're really talking about is the difference between trespassing and theft. Copyright infringement is more like trespassing. When someone trespasses on your property (not counting possible destruction of property) they are depriving you of the right to control who can and cannot go there (and possibly making money off the use of the land).
Nobody says "Hey, Stop that thief! He walked on my land!"
Re:Lost sales? Invest in future sales... (Score:2, Insightful)
The counter-argument is that many software companies offer student discounts. Very significant student discounts. However, any student studying graphics today needs many different apps from many different vendors, they also need to upgrade each year to the latest and greatest version. So even though software is priced well for students you can easily be talking about a grand or more per year and at the same time the students still need good hardware which you can't pirate.
I pirated a lot of software while in college. I got a job and now I own thousands of dollars in software that I upgrade every 1 - 1 1/2 years. Had I not been able to find all that software for free and invested the vast amounts of time learning it I'd probably be working as an insurance broker and would not have bought any of the software I now own.
Quit paying the BSA for a service that alienates your future clientele and remember, the software that is too difficult to pirate will never be purchased by the "student" because the "student" in question didn't become familiar with it...
Re:This just in: (Score:3, Insightful)
No kidding.
I was going to call them parasites, but after reading about the website that sells pubic lice, I decided I didn't want to compare the BSA to such a relatively reputable and useful business endeavor.
Re:Let Me Add to the List; I'm Good at This Too (Score:2, Insightful)
So what kind of logic is that? If I point at your car and say "Give it to me" and you go "Ok" and hand me the keys then there'll be no theft. If all girls always said yes to sex there's be no rapes. Open source software has a license that (almost) always says "Yes", but it's a damn poor analogy to... anything.
Re:Customers and users hate the cloud. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mostly right, but forgetting a very key concept -- NoSQL and full RDBMS serve different purposes. If you need high data integrity, then full ACID commitments and whatnot are great -- but you'll pay for it in speed.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you need maximum speed and have the ability to pre-cleanse your data, then then NoSQL is a much better fit to your needs.
Not to mention, "NoSQL" is just a general term covering basically anything that doesn't use an SQL-like command syntax. Hit up the Wikipedia sometime. NoSQL covers a huge variety of technologies spreading from single-server small-end databases designed for quick, easy programming, all the way up to Google and Amazon's back-ends that are designed for huge amounts of read requests and (comparatively) small amounts of writes.
Consider. If your accounting software fails to provides inconsistent numbers to your accountants, you're going to have some trouble. He probably doesn't care if the DB can only handle 1000 queries per second.. If Google takes an extra 30 seconds to update the results for an "OMGPonies!" search, no-one really gives a damn.. as long as it gets there eventually its fine. But they REALLY need it to handle millions of queries per second. Amazon is somewhere in the middle -- their listings don't really need to-the-millisecond updates, but things like the shopping cart does.
Completely different needs take completely different solutions. Someone who says "NoSQL is always a bad solution" is just as wrong as someone who says "NoSQL is always the solution". Just like most situations where you have two or more viable options.
Read below for the simple truth... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Due to poor ISPs, that would only promote FOSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wait for the patent trolls to take their toll of free software and hardware platforms able to execute free software.
Anyway - most of the figures presented by BSA is vapor since they are assuming that people actually would have purchased the software they are running. Reality is that they wouldn't.
A copyright registration costs $35 (Score:3, Insightful)
We also pay an intagible tax for intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, goodwill, etc.
I couldn't find anything with Google about an analogous tax in my home state of Indiana. But perhaps if California got a real intangibles tax, its Governator might be able to lean on the software and movie "industries" to pull it out of the hole that it's in.
It can't cost anywhere near what the fees are to obtain and maintain a patent for a patent clerk to review an application.
This article is not about patents nearly as much as it is about copyrights. The U.S. copyright registration fee is only $35, which is more like a title fee than a property tax.