Some piracy figures

To my mind piracy is more of a security issue than privacy is. Pirated software may not be updated and patched, leaving it vulnerable to be infected and pass on infections.
In this, some figures are mentioned for China:

There's hardly any visible anti-piracy effort in India and all the PCs I've seen in homes are pirated. A somewhat tangential point is whether "market share" distinguishes between legitimate and pirated software. Ironically, a particular browser apparently got a leg up when China's weight in the computation was hiked.

 

If a legitimate copy of windows or office costs USD200 or more, which can exceed the monthly pay of many people in many countries, then it is completely expected to have so much pirated software going on around. If you had to pay USD10K for some program, and your country's laws did not really pay much attention to copyright and whatnot, would you pay?

Cheers,
Mrk

 

Just to point out these "figures" are completely made up, they are not based on any data, no element of any fact.
The estimates are based on the theory that one pirated piece of software is one lost sale.
This is a false assumption, again no data, no fact, just a guess.
Let's not forget this is not even independent guesswork, so there is Bias as well.

I use the Gimp, does not mean its a lost sale to Photoshop, nope, I can't afford Photoshop. its not lost revenue, its revenue they would of never got anywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance#Criticism

Cheers, Nick

 

So what are we saying? The "numbers" are too high, too low, or that there's just no way to tell?

 

Yes, like most so called 'statistics'.

 

So what does the Daveski17 feel? Too high, too low, or what?

 

ot posts removed

 

We can't tell at all looking at it analytically due to lack of information provided on how they get to the figures they provided and what they actually represent, they don't even define what "commercial value" is.

Cheers, Nick

 

There are two sets of "figures". First, the relative numbers of pirated and genuine versions. The second relates to "value". While the latter is of business interest, what about the former? We hear so much about 'phoning home. Is it not possible to get a handle that way?

 

What he said.

 

My guess is that they just guess the figures. Either way, I don't see any empirical data gathering methods obviously employed.

Like I said, it's probably a matter of "think of a number & then double it" & inevitably "is this the number you were thinking of?", "in that case it must be true."

 

I also think they have high numbers. If, for example, tomorrow Microsoft will find the uncrackable anti piracy tool for Windows, I bet more than 50% of those pirate will go to Linux. The software industry is probably using same calculation methods as the music/movie industry, without taking into account those who really can't afford to buy the stuff, which are the majority of copyright violators.

 

That's comes back to Mrk's comment. My take is that the item in question is not an essential, at least nowadays.

 

Yes, leaving aside the question of how accurate the figures are I feel this is a central issue. I don't know if Microsoft takes into account the state of the economies of other countries when it determines prices for its software. I find the retail prices for Windows and Office steep and I'm in the U.S.

 

the problem that most of modern companies and school build their infrastructure targeting windows users
so they are forcing them to use Windows products
while there are the alternative Linux

 

Over the last 20 years or so (probably more) that I've been using computers, I've never upgraded the Win version on an existing system. When an old system dies and I need a new one, I've dealt strictly with one local OEM who pre-installs the OS (whatever's current) so it's included in the system price and I don't really notice the portion covering the OS.

Back in the days when the OS was DOS, I did upgrade that as new versions became available, to and including 6.20, simply because upgrade versions were relatively cheap compared to from-scratch installations and usually included useful new features. G-d bless DOS 5 for finally switching to relatively useful error messages, and even helpful suggestions for correcting the error (remember the good old "Bad command" days?).

 

from a 2007 article

 

Jeez, I just had a crack of M$ Word once (I needed it for work) & it got updated for nearly a year until I was considered to be a pirate! Luckily, by then I had OpenOffice.org & had discovered that I could make it compatible with Word. So I uninstalled the crack. At the time that I bought the computer, the cost of 'Office' on the top of the price of the machine would have made it difficult to have bought the computer in the first place (I was already about a hundred quid above what I wanted to originally pay).

The fact is; Microsoft is a victim of its own hegemony.

 

There was an intersting article I read some years ago, which referred to statements made by Microsoft about the Chinese market. Their take on what Microsoft said what that they didn't mind the Chinese using pirated software, as long it was Microsoft software.

While this may seem like a strange comment, what you need to understand is that having a large user base helps make your software become the standard - because it is so widely used. E.g. if most users are using pirate versions of MS Office - if all or most of these uses opted for free or alternative office suites instead, MS Office would no longer be the standard office suite used.

 

Yes, that's all very well & good, but why then does MS prosecute 'pirates'?

It has also been on record that Bill Gates personally tried (unsuccessfully) to sink other office freeware with a deliberate policy of non-compatibility.

As I said ... 'hegemony' ...

 

Microsoft always has tried to prosecute those who were having financial gains with their software. Personally, I don't remember them going after the home user.

 

I do wonder at times, how serious Microsoft actually is about piracy. For example there are numerous cracks for Windows - and accordingly pirate copies of Windows are very wildely available. Yet MS does little to prevent pirate copies from working - it is only very occasionaly they update Windows (via a Windows update or as part of a service pack) in order to prevent patched copies of Windows from working. The updates never prevent every crack for working, and in any case new and updated cracks are released very reguarly to stay ahead of MS.

Maybe they are worreid they if they cracked down on the piaracy too much, users of pirate software would start ditching Windows for Linux for example?

 

I just got a notice that they had detected illegal software. I honestly prefer OpenOffice anyway.

 

I think that you are very probably right about this.

 

I have seen a computer running pirate Windows 7, and a window pops up every few hours saying it is that it is not running a legitiamte copy of Windows. However you can just cancel this window and the computer keeps running.