Making the stupid assumption that everone using Pirate software could and would cough up the full price for legit software... a myth that has been debunked millions of times.

I'm amazed that TheRegister has the gaul to print the press release without and even longer statement pointing out the factual errors.

The best argument I've seen the BSA use is that piracy funds terrorism. Or it could have been FAST. You know that ad where the porker is stoking a fire.

Your pirating is contributing to the war on America!

Now, how much is Open Source robbing the UK economy of? Surely if Linux had to be licensed and you had to pay the BSA for Open Office there would be "high paying" jobs created? I'm sorry for using Firefox and other open source projects - I'm directly supporting terrorism and contributing to global warming unless I buy American products.

Anyway, piracy makes baby Paris Hilton cry so I think we should all just stop. For the sake of the children.

I wonder why The Register keeps reprinting these pointless stats from The Register.

Fact of the matter is - highest percentage of pirated software is developed outside of the UK, so although there will no doubt be some jobs created in distributors, support, etc, the majority of jobs would be created overseas.

Whereas, imagine if you will, those people who save their pennies by pirating software decide instead to go out on a bender with the proceeds. That money goes into the local economy, creating a much larger number of jobs in bars, clubs, breweries and brothels nationwide.

I would not go as far as to say that piracy is good for the economy, but the obvious scientific conclusions from the statistics are that a decrease in software piracy will inevitably lead to more unemployed bar staff, strippers and BSA software piracy investigators.

Jolyon

ps. Piracy is bad kids, don't do it.

I wonder why The Register keeps reprinting these pointless stats from the BSA.

Fact of the matter is - highest percentage of pirated software is developed outside of the UK, so although there will no doubt be some jobs created in distributors, support, etc, the majority of jobs would be created overseas.

Whereas, imagine if you will, those people who save their pennies by pirating software decide instead to go out on a bender with the proceeds. That money goes into the local economy, creating a much larger number of jobs in bars, clubs, breweries and brothels nationwide.

I would not go as far as to say that piracy is good for the economy, but the obvious scientific conclusions from the statistics are that a decrease in software piracy will inevitably lead to more unemployed bar staff, strippers and BSA software piracy investigators.

Jolyon

ps. Piracy is bad kids, don't do it.

So counterfeit software costs the economy how much?

What about the artificially high costs of retail software? How much money and how many jobs were lost to finance the licensing of MS products? Office 2003 still retails for over $300 US. Of that, I would conservatively estimate that $250 is pure profit and the cost is supported only by the monopoly that MS has in the corporate desktop sector.

I would like to see the BSA study that captures the amount of money lost to crashed files, malware attacks, and patches or updates due to the poor software quality. I'll bet it makes the amount claimed for "counterfeit" losses look quite diminutive...

>> The UK is missing out on more than £1bn in lost taxes and the creation of over 13,000 new high-paying jobs over four years if we all took software piracy more seriously, according to a new report.

Don't they always say that piracy increases the cost for those who buy software legitimately. Therefore you would think that less piracy would equate to lower prices and no change in revenue or taxes.

The maths is interesting (and pretty much backs up what I said) as they expect the taxes per year levied on the software industry to be £32.5 billion - and they are currently losing about £0.25b per year (£1b/4 years) - and 27% of software is pirated. That means by reducing piracy of 27% to 0% they can increase tax revenues by about 3/4 of a percent.

Once again, I presume these guys are counting a 12-year-old leeching a copy of some $25,000 video editing package as $25,000 in lost revenue, as if Mr. Tween would've gone out and bought one if it wasn't on alt.warez.0-day.avid.bork.bork.bork.

If it wasn't possible to pirate big ticket software packages, then perhaps the lower priced shareware and also the open source stuff would have a better chance of penetrating the market... Piracy indirectly benefits Adobe and Microsoft and the other big companys... otherwise, they'd have to compete on merit...

is this problem UK only ?

lol

Is Other countries moving an eyelid ?

"The UK is missing out on more than £1bn in lost taxes and the creation of over 13,000 new high-paying jobs over four years if we all took software piracy more seriously, according to a new report."

Surely if the organisations pay out this license fee that they apparently aren't it would actually reduce the amounts of jobs due to higher business costs?

Or are we talking about the jobs of 13,000 developers cos if thats the case 99% of the software is not even UK based their all from USA India etc.. hence this is all a fabricated story to probably push out a new legislation keep clown and his boys busy....

Shoot the pirates. that will get the £1bn back.

Then get a bunch of twits in (probably find a very large number huddled together in cabinet meetings or at their relating golf establishments) and pay them the sum total of £1bn (so it makes no bloody difference)

Then in a bizarre twist to look productive, lose a bunch of laptops with personal data. spend over the £1bn saved on looking for them all with now joy, thus resetting the balance with current climate.

perfect. I'll get my coats, the govt's come a knockin'

find out what the hell the government waste our money one, what with being over budget in 9 months of a 12 month budget... I think mister brown is the biggest dent to our economy there's ever been.

but who cares, he'll just raise taxes again, we're just cash monkeys.

hmm, now the feds are kickin in the door...

The figures quoted are almost certainly nonsense numbers based upon the total value of unlicensed software. I would be willing to bet large amounts of money that a large percentage (>80%) of 'pirated' software would simply not be used if users had no option but to pay full price.

In terms of business (a popular target for anti-piracy organisations) using unlicensed software can be the difference between being profitable and competitive, or not being. Many small businesses especially simply cannot afford to fully license ALL of the software they use, I'm not saying at all that this isn't in some way morally or legally dubious, it's just a plain fact.

The money the BSA reckons would be pumped into the software industry by fully licensing all software in most cases simply doesn't actually exist, and where it DOES exist it would be channelled from other industries and areas of the economy instead. It's a classic example of the 'broken window fallacy' (see Wikipedia).

Were software licensing to be rigourously enforced, as the BSA advocates, many businesses would face serious difficulty and the real possibility of going bust, with the attendant job losses and economic damage that entails. The economy in fact would probably SHRINK, and could certainly not grow by anything approaching the amount quoted.

In terms of personal software use, strict licensing enforcement would take software out of the hands of many of our truely 'creative' people (I thought the government was supposed to be very keen on the 'creative economy') and could therfore nip in the bud many of our future sucessful entrepreneurs/artists/musicians etc. How good would this be for our economy in the future?

How many of our graphic designers cut their teeth on pirated copies of Photoshop or Corel Draw? How many of our engineers gained their valuable first experience on dodgy copies of Autocad or Orcad? I could go on.

"IDC's chief research officer John Gantz said that reducing PC software piracy would benefit small business owners by cutting back the legal risks associated with using unlicensed software."

What risks? The risk that someone in your small business is using unlicensed software without your knowledge? Surely that doesn't go away?

Or do they mean, if there was less piracy, no-one would bother policing it any more, so using unlicensed software would then be "fine" ... thus increasing corporate piracy and bringing us back to square one?

I think we should be told.

Of course, if many organisations took a closer look at their software licensing compliance they might well find that there are areas which are over licensed as well as under licensed. As an industry lobby group, BSA are only ever going to see one side of this picture.

Ensuring correct levels of software licensing is getting much more difficult as applications are being deployed into virtualised environments: every manufacturer has a different view of whether the license is per system, or per CPU, or per CPU core, or per CPU thread, or by capacity allocated to a virtual environment. Getting the correct amount of licensing for software deployed into a resource managed zone in a Solaris instance running on a system with an 8 core processor, with 8 threads per core is not simple. Far more software needs to be licensed per employee, or per customer, or on some other form of "all you can eat" license rather than ending up as an expensive game of datacentre cops and robbers. Better still, follow the Sun model of allowing free use of the software, and basing your business on support and other forms of value rather than straight software royalties.

So taking the approach that all software licensing problems can be solved by hitting users with a stick is pretty unhelpful. While there clearly are straightforward cases of people and businesses running unlicensed copies, producing "funny money" estimates of losses is at best over-simplistic, and at worst disingenuous.

about Policy-Practice synergy compared to Policy-Practice divide.

That's always the justification I hear for piracy. "It's like FREE ADVERTISING, man!" Right, because God knows that NOBODY would EVER hear of Microsoft Windows if it weren't for all those people flogging their OEM copies.

Did they get the widdle piwates to check the box that says "I'm a widdle piwate, here's my spouwt"??

C'mon get real Bollocks, Smells like Arrogance. Your figures are as overvalued as a US president's usefulness.

Here's the real kick in the pants: the UK govt probably believes the figures as given. The US court system (while certainly more corrupt and witless) are already at "pants down, bent over" position for Big Money; now lets see if the UK govt takes the same stance.

Where if you don't have a receipt (the certificate of authority isn't good enough!) then the copy is pirated?

Well I think I can see where the 1Bn figure comes from.

I assume the BSA doesn't do its works* out of the goodness* of it's collective heart*. Exactly how many m/billions of member-company-$$$ are drained into that particular black hole that could be more productively spent in local economies?

*for very loose definitions of 'work', 'goodness' and 'heart'

The title should be "Companies with business plan which defies reality lose money".

Red Hat are doing OK, and everyone's copying their software.

Just a number plucked from the air !

Now who was it that said repeat a lie so often that eventually all but the most cynical believe it to fact !

Thus the 21st Century has become the new age where both lies and propaganda rules the limited and heavily censored mass media with a Gestapo like vice clamp at our throats !

But Paris knows all about numbers !

.... used to shore up Northern Rock, billions wiped off the values of shares, billions written off in credit crisis......... with that kind of perspective I don't think I care much about the effect that piracy of software has on the economy.

Going for broke.

that the answer to this is report can best be summerised as being spherical and in the plural.

Yes

Little company here in Nottingham called Serif. Make various programs for DTP, photoediting (think most of the features of Photoshop, fraction of the price), and other stuff. All sold in PC World.

anyways....

I firmly believe that (I also believe this is the case with music, videos, anything that gets pirated) if you bring down the price so that it is within reach of more people, more people will BUY and less will need to pirate. I'm not saying it would STOP piracy, but I bet it would bring the numbers down a bit.

Lets see..

-£1bn could be saved to the tax-and-revenue service (thus more available -public- money) by simply shutting down the BSA offices and selling the land underneath to nuclear development plants.

-£500mil could be saved by eliminating frivolous lawsuits raised by the music and movie industry, in cases they're ill-equipped to prove.

-£500mil could be made instantly by forcing Microsoft to obey the law and pay up their fines. Additional jobs, in the form of regulatory inspectors would bring in extra revenue via taxes, and fines for every infraction Microsoft are guilty of.

-£450mil could be saved INSTANTLY by canceling all Microsoft licensing agreements and going open source over the next two years.

Oh my, there's £1.5bn right there just by exercising the people's will and following up on cases already won. And a further 1bn to be made getting rid of the bottom feeders that cause this crap in the first place! Can I get commission on that??

Thanks for playing "make up new numbers to shock! awe! shame! the public",

I'm your host Anonymous Coward saying Goodnight Everybody!

I just saw some figures that showed 270,000,000 passengers on public transport in a year.

If we remove public transport each of these 270,000,000 passengers would need to by a car. That is $4,050,000,000,000 that our automotive industry is missing out on each year. Ban public transport immediately for the good of the economy.