back to article Software piracy rates fall

Software piracy rates have stayed static in the UK and fallen in many countries around the world despite the recession. The Business Software Alliance - the big vendors' lobby group - said despite an expectation that economic hardship would increase the number of dodgy copies of software in use in fact rates fell in 54 …

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  1. Basic
    FAIL

    Fantastic

    So the trend hasn't gone the way we expected - In fact it looks like Piracy isn't quite as bad as we've been telling you all, so we'll just say this is all due to "sustained momentum from years of anti-piracy programmes and for the jump in netbook shipments to nearly 20 percent of the market".

    So... Prove it.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    <title>

    Wonder how much encrypted traffic has risen (in %) compared to the rates of fallen piracy, would be interesting to see :)

  3. Jimmy Floyd

    I wonder...

    ...what the growth of open source software has done for the statistics?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Vendors take note ...

    ... that the country with the cheapest software prices has the lowest rates of piracy.

    So, in the UK at least, piracy could be all-but-eliminated if Microsoft/Adobe/Whoever simply lowered their prices a bit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      this is true

      Here in Russia they've lowered the prices on PC games to around $10-15 for new titles (that are $60 in the US/ £40-50 in the UK), and piracy in that segment of the market is nearly gone. And it used to be one of the highest when they were pricing them according to US prices. Now if only they would do that for other software...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    How could they possible know?

    ...and why bother reporting invented statistics.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interestingly

    the BBC published this same story a while ago under the headline "SOFTWARE PIRACY CONTINUES TO RISE" http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/technology/10107774.stm

    Technically true, but for policy makers in the UK (or any other country for that matter) would only read the headline and come to the conclusion we're all freetards.

  7. The First Dave

    untitled

    "assuming that every dodgy copy found would be replaced by a full price copy"

    I think that we can assume from these figures that piracy is not strongly linked to price, so that is an obvious fallacy, even ignoring the knock-on effect of lower spend on other products due to lack of remaining budget.

  8. lglethal Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Im interested...

    I would be interested to know where they get these figures from. I doubt too many people are stupid enough to admit to using pirated software in answer to a survey from the people who sue you for using pirated software.

    So is this based on detection rates extrapolated to the whole country which one can hardly call an accurate figure (because only those companies who are stupid or get ratted on by ex-employees get caught)?

    Would be interested to know...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    wtf?

    Netbooks lead to lower piracy rates?

    Well by that complete absence of logic we can also conclude that cars with built in sat nav lead to lower rates of teen pregnancy. Fucking unbelievable.

    I'm not surprised piracy is lower, there's bugger all worth stealing these days. In days gone buy people actually gave a shit about the software they released. Now it's all Microsoft IDE cookie cutter stuff with holes you could drive a combine harvester through. You might as well just use open source if the choice is between:

    1. Pay £x,xxx per seat for unfinished software that will never get finished

    2. Download unfinished software for free and finish it yourself.

    1. ravenviz Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: wtf?

      It is well known that teenagers who get to where they're going instead of 'getting lost' down country lanes, have lower levels of pregnancy.

  10. Paul_Murphy

    I suspect that Linux

    And similar open source software are also a good game changer - especially on older and slower systems.

    It would be nice to have the likes of Microsoft and Apple not worrying about piracy, but only because nobody wanted to use their software since people were using open source instead.

    ttfn

  11. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    WTF?

    "Netbooks, the group claims, come with enough bundled software to discourage further piracy."

    I'll ammend

    "Netbooks, the group claims, come with so little power they can't run any decent software."

    there, corrected.

  12. Mark 65

    Probably

    Just small businesses using linux and free software instead of knock-off copies of office or the like.

  13. Suburban Inmate
    Pirate

    Maybe they mean _detected_ piracy

    I.E. busting counterfeiters. Maybe skint punters are getting savvy with BitTorrent etc?

  14. John Tserkezis

    Slackers.

    Sheeze, do I have to do everything myself? I've even resorted to downloading stuff OTHER than porn to make up for the world-wide shortfall.

    Pretty much only thing left is downloading music from Justin Bieber, and I'll only do that as a last resort because I'm going to have to slash my wrists afterwards.

    So come on, save my life and keep the imaginary statistics up!

  15. Doshu

    is it possible?

    I wonder if most people with the means to do so would pay for all their software if it was fairly priced and relatively bug free. So i guess the real question here is: are people mostly honest or not?

  16. Drefsab
    Pirate

    Meh

    I find this funny because Id love to know how they REALLY measure this, I pirate everything, be it a console game/pc game/application/movies/music/tv shows etc, then I buy the stuff I really liked and want to support.

    For example this year so far I've bought 5 games, I've pirated a hell of a lot of than than played then deleted. TV shows I could go buy a PVR and arse around (as I have a full virgin HD package) but instead I just download what I want and watch it on any device on my network.

    My downloading habits have not changed, nether has by buying habits, the only thing that has changed lately is the quality of stuff produced.

  17. Parsifal
    Alert

    @ Title

    Much political bias in your title writing team? , couldn't you give him time to warm up the loo seat before blaming him for the last 13 years :)

    1. Steven Knox
      Boffin

      @Parsifal

      It is a well known fact that the person in charge is always responsible for the current state of affairs, regardless of when said state of affairs began or when said person took charge.

      It has always been known that power transfer is immediate; otherwise there would be anarchy, and that's a Bad Thing. The work of Benjamin Parker et al. showed that power and responsibility are irreversibly linked. Hence, as soon as one assumes power in a given domain, one must at the same time assume all responsibility in said domain. Therefore, anyone in a position of power is immediately responsible for the current state of affairs.

  18. Bernard M. Orwell

    I call 'Arrrr!'

    Great statistics, and if we assume for a moment that they aren't entirely fictious then we have to wonder where they get them from?

    I suspect they've just stumbled onto the effects of ISP port blocking, throttling and unfair FUP's in action. After all, we've switched from torrents, because of the all the negative publicity, to....erm....other methods to obtain our illegtimate warez, haven't we all?

    A committe, research group, company or government dept. is *never* going to be responsive enough to keep up with the determined and skilled pirate. They're always one step behind.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I rather suspect that...

    ...the prospect of getting your knocked off copy of Office with added-for-free spyware puts a lot of people off these days.

  20. ZenCoder
    Pirate

    There is a lot of free quality software out there.

    Over the last 10 years I have been replacing my software with free alternatives whenever those alternatives were good enough for my needs.

    Currently the only non-free software I have is Photoshop Dreamweaver, True Image and Abby Fine Reader, Windows XP and OSX.

    About half the free software I use is also open source.

    My advice is that before going through the hassle and risk of pirating something, do a little research and see if there isn't a free alternative that isn't as good as or better.

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