The Business Software Alliance—a trade group representing the software industry—has released its Global Software Piracy Study for 2010, finding that the total retail value of software pirated during the year was some $59 billion, up 14 percent from 2009. Furthermore, the global average piracy rate for PC software in 2010 was 42 percent, the second-highest figure in the eight years the BSA has been conducting its worldwide study. Piracy rates are considerably higher in some developing markets, including averages of 60 percent in the Asia Pacific region, and 64 percent in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. And the BSA believes one of the reasons piracy is so widespread is that many users of pirated software don’t actually understand that they’re stealing.
“The software industry is being robbed blind,” said BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman, in a statement. “Software piracy is an urgent problem for the whole economy, not just the software industry, because software is an essential tool of production. Businesses of all sorts rely on software to run their operations. Properly licensed companies are being unfairly undercut when their competitors avoid overhead costs by stealing software tools.”
According to the BSA study, some 20 percent of all paid software revenue comes from emerging markets, but some some $32 billion worth of software piracy takes place there as well. The BSA notes about half the PCs shipped last year went to those markets.
The BSA finds that consumers are generally aware of piracy issues: seven in ten PC users say they believe innovators should be paid for their creation, and eight ihn ten say they value legal software of pirated versions because it’s more reliable and secure. However, six in ten believe that it is legal to buy a single license for a software package and install it on multiple computers in a home, and 47 percent overall (51 percent in emerging economies) believe the same behavior is legal in the workplace.
“The irony is people everywhere value intellectual property rights, but in many cases they don’t understand they are getting their software illegally,” Holleyman said in a statement.
Holleyman says the software industry as a whole is doing “everything it can” to promote the legal use of software, but calls for governments to step in with stronger enforcement of intellectual property laws and public education campaigns.
They are not saying that their coffers would be 59B richer… They are saying there is 59B worth of theiving going on. From people who have no legal right to use the program and/or game…
True, if it was stopped in reality, much of it would not get paid, the software would simply not be used.. However, the notion that open source software or free software would replace it is simply wrong…
Linux has been around for 25 years.. and for the most part has made NO dent into the desktop world. Apple is EVEN more closed off then MS, and IS making a dent into the desktop…
How many open games are there?? COD makes more money then 10 movies make in a year…
On the other hand, you have the publishers who systematically rob consumers by publishing too early, not patching game-breaking bugs, overcharging for subscriptions, making a bare bones game and then charging for ‘expansions’ with content that should have been in the original release….. Maybe when they stop trying to ‘game’ the ‘consumers’ they will realize the finite potential of the market.
They make it sound like they believe that if piracy were to stop today, that this year 60 billion dollars would magically appear out of nowhere.
Most programs aren’t even used after downloading them.. Meaning if the trial version was downloaded.. It would be all the same.. Believe me
This figure is very misleading, because the majority of individuals whom pirate programs would not buy them anyways.
Because Star Craft II and Black Ops aren’t open source. >_
I call BS. Why not say it totaled $59 gillion? Just as accurate as the number they are throwing around here.
Why pirate when you have Free, Libre, Open Source Software?!