What is Digg?127 Comments
- soogy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+76Those are interesting, but there's something I fail to comprehend. "$34 bln in global losses due to software piracy"
How can you lose something you never had? If I steal your CD, that's a loss of the CD. If I downloaded pirated software, I probably wasn't going to buy it anyways, so it's not a loss. - stoops, on 10/12/2007, -3/+38Well what do they expect, I remember when I was younger and wanted to get into using Photoshop early but how many 10 years do you know have $800 in their pocket?
- schleufer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25Yeah, I think we already went over this last week in regard to pirating.
According to their logic, I lost $100 million last week because I didn't win the State Lottery. Again. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22More like 95% in Asia, you can buy any pirated software cd for around $ 1 to $ 2.
- nuclearpenguins, on 10/12/2007, -5/+25I'm doing my part to keep up that 22% here in good ol' North America. Are you doing your part? Stop slacking and get to it, yarrrr!
- Eddible, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21So true, they don't help themselves by charging so much for the software in the first place.
- rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20I read this as "100% of Software releases are overpriced for the income of 35% of the worlds population".
And you know its true, I'm using a hand-down copy of Photoshop CS, because there is no hope in hell of me being able to afford the software. - DanielYH, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21I take a computer graphic class at school. i love using photoshop and playing with it, but there's no way in hell that i could pay $600 for a software(unless i become a professional). I got no other choice but to download a pirated version, even the teacher recommend it.
- kidlinux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15kilofox:
"It utterly amazes me that you and your 18-25 ish year old peers rationalize your 'the company will never have my money anyway'. That gives you entitlement to rip-off a company's intellectual property?"
That's certainly not a justification for piracy, but it *is* the reason why figures like "$34 billion in losses" are vastly overblown. I'd be willing to bet that 95% of people pirating 35% of software wouldn't use that software if there was absolutely no other way to get it than to pay full price for it. The same applies to music and movies.
Like I said, you can't justify piracy, but you can't justify those overblown financial "losses" either. - cyberwired, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15pffft, losses are only losses if people would have paid for the software if they couldnt have pirated it
I'd have probably become a mechanic or something if I weren't able to 'obtain' software to learn from and now teach people how to use it and fix computers (I'm a computer technican) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15This is assuming every pirated copy is a copy that someone would have bought. A lot of people who pirate software would never purchase the original software in question, usually because of expensive costs.
- gargantuan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Software companies, behind closed doors, really do welcome a degree of priracy. In the end, when people have to go legit (eg. setting up in business, working for an employer) they will request the software they are most comfortable with. For most people, that's software they had been using illegally up to that point. Installed user bases count for a lot, earnings is only part of the story. Not that I condone piracy, but it has it's up side.
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I'm almost certain Adobe turns a blind eye to pirated version of Photoshop for the that reason (That because children/students have been able to use the software for ages, means they have more chance of being able to use it in a professional situation, where they will most likely use, or atleast have, the full suite of suite of stuff, and buy updates etc..)
Most companys like Adobe, Discreet, Alias, Avid etc make their money though large companies, not your average student, not untill they get a job using the full, epensive, paided version..
- Ben - Flankk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13According to the RIAA when you share your ticket, they win the State Lottery.
- Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14yes but how do you think all those art and gfx design students got the ability and talent to go into those professions.
I am sure they didnt wait till they were 20, say I'm going to fork out $800 to see if I like gfx deisgn if not, well at least I have an expensive coaster - fistandoodle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12I remember having read somewhere that some of the companies price their software so high so that businesses would pay that amount. So, for things like Photoshop, Adobe might expect some piracy, but that most of their revenue would come from large corporations.
I guess with the rise of the internet, they realized, "oh s&@*%#, they can share this easily! For free!" So they released Elements, a cheaper version that the more conscious people would pay for and use. (Or you could grab The Gimp).
I balked at the price, yet my company didn't, so I use it at work. - soogy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Right, but when they buy it, they only pay a few bucks. Consider that the "burning fee" for whoever copied the CD. It's essentially the same as buying a blank CD yourself, and paying yourself to burn it.
- DubbleA, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12That is an interesting chart. According to the graph, there is more pirated software in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East then in North America.
- Slagar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13While quite a few people on digg use pirated software (myself included), I for one would prefer that the comments not become an advertising board for damn warez servers.
- kazsymonds, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Exactly! Companies have salaries to pay for for devlopers etc, if everyone took the software without paying for it then the company would not be able to be in business anymore, thus causing that software to cease!
In a way its much like the tax system, those of us that pay for stuff are paying a higher price because of all the freeloaders who dont want to pay (or work).
That said i think if windows was £50 everyone would pay for it.
I also think that laws in the middle east are slightly more leaniant and that their authorities have bigger things to worry about than piracy! - mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Responding to the parent, DUH! America has the harshest penalties in the world for illegal pirating of software.
- xcalibre, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Im a student.
= No cash.
If I get my software from the blackmarket its because I can not afford the pricing put by companies. If there was absolutely no way of getting software cheap (either by downloading or buying at a reduced price) then I wouldnt be having them in the first place. Therefore I believe Im not contributing to those 34bln losses.
If I had the means I would buy software, honestly! - speel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I don't belive this nonsence. They provide no info on where they got these numbers .. for all we know they just pulled them out of the sky.
- andreo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Lots of commercial software that is out there has freeware or open source software that does the same thing. I think that lots of people that pirate software don't realize this. I know that I didn't for a long time.
Couple that with the mentality that bigger is better and if you have a free PDF document creator that's less then a meg vs Adobe's Acrobat PDF creator weighing in at over 100 megs for the full package. There are going to be people that will say that the 100+ meg package must be better since it's bigger.
Personally I prefer the freeware / open source software. Normally it's smaller, doesn't molest your OS as much as commercial software, stays in-active until you run it, and just simply does the job that it says it will do and nothing else. There are some commercial programs that I would simply never run on my computer at home because they are bloated and slow it down. - Lorian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Photoshop Elements is annoying, my school has it and some of the "professional" things that they have taken out I use (and I'm far from a professional).
- silic0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Not just that, but they think that if we weren't able to pirate their crappy software, we'd pay for it.
Oh, so wrong. - Cerberus047, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Warez always scared me for some reason...... all the scary black pages with porn pop ups and
Click here
Here
And here
To continue to the site
Then you have to download software to get the stuff.... or maybe im just doing it wrong but warez was always like having sex with an old hooker..... you never know what your going to get out of it, you just know its not what you wanted - gmerin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I can provide you with a convincing table and graph (in colors!) similarly "proving" that the moon is made of cheese (well, at least 35% of it anyway). Will you still be impressed? Demand substantiation first. Without any proof it's just another instance of a lack of journalistic integrity by ZD.
- qualar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What these figures don't take into account is the fact that just because a person installs a piece of pirated software on their PC doesn't mean they would have bought it if a pirated version wasn't available.. If that pirated software wasn't available a lot of people still wouldn't have bought the package.
Eg. If MS Office wasn't available in a pirated form, a lot of uses would just end up using OpenOffice or other free packages.
I think MS has the best idea with their Visual Studio Tools, where they give cut-down but still very usable free versions so people can still play around. - mmpkidz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4In a strict accounting sense, none of this is a "loss" for the companies involved. They certainly can't record it on their books as a loss, since these kinds of figures are only estimates for the industry as a whole. How many copies of Windows XP were pirated in Microsoft's last fiscal year? Do they record each pirated copy as a loss at the full retail value? Who knows?
Ironically, although we hear inflated figures like this all the time from the MPAA and RIAA, their members would NOT want to record such high losses on their balance sheets. These are all just bogeyman numbers. - iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I can tell you back in the day I pirated EVERY piece of software out there, nowadays I buy the software I know that works and works well. For instance, I pirated MS Office, Photoshop, and Light-wave - now, I have legitimate copies. I've also pirated vast amounts of other software, and I wouldn't use them even if the company paid me to (e.g. they sucked ass). Even Bill Gates attributes some of the success of Windows on pirating. Like others have said above, if they actually were losing this much money in pirating ( be it downloads, or even physical sales ) - they'd be out of business long ago. When your software is "GOOD ENOUGH" to be pirated, and you have that many people pirating it, then it's time to restructure your pricing and stop whining. I mean, the movie industry (e.g. the going out to the theater) whines when summer comes along, because most people do other things, instead of going to the movies. What did they do? They decided to release blockbuster movies in the time if the year they are slowest, and release crappy-ass movies in the time that most people are bored and would go and see almost anything. Did they bitch and whine and try to play the numbers games which won't ever get anything done (other than trying to $-feed law making folks)? I think not.
- r121, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Exactly. If copanies were actually losing this much money, they'd be out of business and bankrupt.
- Outdoor83, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's so crappy, but you still use it?
- mbeckfl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This article is very confusing. I'm not sure what they are trying to prove or where they got their data. They are NOT talking about individuals who install pirated software on their computers, which seems to be what most of these comments are talking bout. The article seems to suggest that 1/3+ of the computer manufacturers / resellers install pirated software on their systems, but they offer no details, examples, etc, so I don't' know if they are accusing a Dell sized operation of Windows licensing fraud or are talking about the neighborhood computer shop putting unregistered copies of Norton on their system
- M4v3R, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8http://www.kanzelsberger.com/ - Pixel32 - Replacement for Photoshop, $32 only and works on nearly every OS.
- Cerberus047, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Whats cool about piracy is those old sites that were made in like 1997 where there is no where to purchase the software but they still say pay 24.99 for this software, lives on in the internet forever... (or untill all the seeds leave)
- mikaellindberg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'd like to see a measurement (if possible) of how much money is _generated_ from use of pirated software. Perhaps this is a globally profitable arrangement...
- Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3gargantuan
Many companies used that tactics indeed. Microsoft, Valve, you name it... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Every illegal app that I have, I could easily live without, and would never buy any of them. Photoshop? Never really use it. Limewire Pro? Quicktime Pro? I could just easily use the free versions. With all the great open source apps out there for Windows, there's no real need to pirate the apps, even though sometimes the commecial ones are a bit better.
Graphic Editing: Gimpshop
Music Playing: Musikcube
CD Buring: CDBurnerXP (way better than Nero
Video Playing: VLC
Antivirus: Avast
Video Encoding: Media Coder
Web Publishing/Editing: NVU
FTP: Filezilla
Office: Openoffice.org
Registry Mechanic: CCleaner
etc, etc. - iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3QUOTE: Dell doesn't have a 35% worldwide market share penetration. I think it's like 3%, and I can speak with certainty that Dell, HP, Sony, etc :UNQUOTE
Actually, you're thinking of Apple -they had 2.9% WW market share in 2005 and Dell in 2005 had 19.45% WW market share - Google it yourself when necessary. - dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3While I somewhat agree with you, there are some areas free/open source stuff doesn't even remotely compared to the commercial software.. Gimpshop and Photoshop aren't comparable for anyone planning on doing (semi-)professional work with it in the future. NVU is still a long long way behind Dreamweaver. And open-source video editing software is, frankly, horrible..
But yeh, CDBurnerXP is great, I far far prefer Avast to Norton AV, Openoffice.org is (mostly) as useable as MS Office.. Quicktime Pro has some features that should be in the normal version (I mean cutting full-screen video unless you pay is slightly stupid).
For some things, yes, open source is great (web/ftp/etc servers, stuff like FTP clients, basicly anything that isn't realted to graphic/media stuff really... Yes I know theres exceptions, but generaly commercial software is better for media.. Is there a decent open-source equivelant to Boujou? Nope. Final Cut? Nope. Shake/Fusion? Nope.. etc)
- Ben - electromagnetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Outdoor83
Charging the maximum possible for a product only works when it is the ONLY product on the market. There's other OS people can use so charging a grand for a piece of software is absurd, the only reason everyone has it is because not many people know how to get another system installed nor care as they get it preinstalled on their computer and never think any more of it.
There is also this amazing practice that they're using with the xbox 360, it's called loss leader. You charge less for one thing to draw people in, I mean microsoft are losing hundreds of millions on the 360 but the games cost more than a regular PC game and that is exactly where they make money. If they did this more people would be happy to buy windows and then would end up buying other microsoft programs like Office. Ever buy baked beans from the super market? Ever wondered why they're so ridiculously inexpensive? They're a loss leader product, everyone buys it and if they're practically giving it away compared to other shops people will come and buy it, and then they're going to end up buying other things they need which make a better profit.
1/3 of microsoft products are pirated and they're the biggest industry in the world, they can literally run throwing money down the drain for several years without a problem. If they wanted to they could deliver a copy of Vista to everyone in the world and still not have a money problem. - Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Are we surprised? How many people had $600 to fork out for Windows XP? Let alone nearly a grand for an Adobe suite.
Long live the great pirating seas! Yarrr. - danielsasona, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I would just put in my testimonial $0.02 and say that at this point there is essentially no reason to pirate software. It used to be all about needing to pirate software in order to accomplish your computing tasks, since the price of a purchase of the software was out of the question. At this point, however, the open source alternatives to proprietary software are often better than the paid alternative, and you do not have to worry about the virii that come bundles into your warez0rz. Photoshop->Gimp; Illustrator->Inkscape; Office->OpenOffice. Heck, even games come in open-source flavors, which can be damned fun (although I love me some HL2).
Most of these have the added benefit of being cross-platform, so you will have an easier time getting yourself off the Windows tit when you decide to do so. And you are supporting the mindshare of people who don't think you should have to pay out the nose for good software.... and are doing something about it! - blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You could have kept the price of the trip to china and bought a legitimate copy... or not.
- tedc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Keep in mind that it takes a lot of man hours to code something like Photoshop. Sometimes I think the punishment for software piracy should be 6 months of community service writing open source. :-) You will quickly get gain an appreciation for the effort that goes into it.
That said, I do agree that productivity titles tend to be pitched more to the corporate market and are priced accordingly. I write specialized software for the geophysical industry, and the bulk of our profits come from corporate site licences at several grand a pop. Personal sales were mainly to profs and students, but I am certain there were many illegal copies floating around on campuses. In the end, we decided to cut our losses and begin leasing it to universities for free, which may have an unexpected benefit. The mining sector is booming at the moment, and there is a huge demand for geophysics majors. Anything that lowers the bar to entry like free software will help us all in the long run. - Leo55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Someone should throw these piracy charts at Adobe and Microsoft...
The more they try to stop people from pirating, the more people wanna do it.
If they made their products cheaper maybe 10% of the 35% will stop using pirated softwares. - kilofox, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9@pies..
It utterly amazes me that you and your 18-25 ish year old peers rationalize your "the company will never have my money anyway". That gives you entitlement to rip-off a company's intellectual property?
Thanks for the introductory course in Rationalize 101. The "paradox" you speak of isnt a paradox... its just a way to justify your reason for taking something you didnt pay for. Wait.. I know I know, copying is not theft. Semanics is a cornerstone of Rationalize 101 right?
Its safe to say that a good majority of digg users are young-adults like yourself. (I would be very surprized if you are in your 30's or more). ***** costs money... if I used your "the company will never have my money" nonsense my home would be littered with items I never paid for. - Outdoor83, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Microsoft doesn't know much about business practices?! Are you out of your mind? They got to be one of the biggest companies in the world without knowing anything about business practices?
They sell their stuff at a price where the people who buy it * price they paid = maximum they can possibly get. Basic business principle there. If you can't afford Vista, then you can't have a copy. This is how it works in the rest of society, I don't know why it's so difficult for people to understand here. If you don't like it, send Bill Gates an email suggesting they have cheaper prices for some segment of the population you're in (high school, college, unemployed, whatever that may be). If they don't agree, you don't get one. Why is this so hard? - blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3AFAIK, the 'A' in BSA stands for ass. So you know where the stats come from.
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