can anyone say china, india, ect...

"Crickets chirping"

Saying that pirated software was used d/not = software sales lost.

Someday these analysts will get a clue on that.

ARRRG! Keep it up me mateees! ARRRRG!

Ha. I was wandering why we have so many propaganda news this week. The BSA is back with their studies. How much the dirty pirates are costing us?! I have simple math task for everyone to solve. Let accept that the "losses" are really $50.2 billion and there is magic that allows to remove the "piracy" this will result in $50.2 billion less money spend for hardware because software and hardware are complementary products. How much the software sells will drop if less hardware is sold?
The numbers of those studies is very questionable. They have only single purpose to full the propaganda in order to request more protections for failing business model. Selling copies in today reality is doomed. The software companies need to find new business model.

Do they realize most people wouldnt buy the software if they didnt get it illegally? If i didnt pirate microsoft word, i would use open office. If i didnt pirate all my games, i would play online games. Only a few things are worth it, those are the things that make money

If games went $50 may i would buy a couple. If photoshop wasnt $700
i would probably buy it, it would have to come down to about $50 maybe.

I think if some magic came about that made pirating impossible you'd see software sales go up slightly short term. Long term you very well might see sales DECREASE relatively as the advancement of computing in third world countries slowed. The VAST VAST majority of people pirating software would never buy it so they might as well be making up their "we lost this much" number.

I think the way the software industry SHOULD look at the problem is as an indication that they need to think of more affordable ways to market their product.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics....

How do we quantify speculation?

Hello, how can I help you?
Visitor: Hi, I would like to know why photoshop is $700
Randy: Hi there.
Randy: I'll be glad to help you with that.
Visitor: Thank you
Randy: Are you referring to Photoshop CSI'll stay online while you place the order.
Visitor: Yes, I want to know why it is so exspensive, thats almost as much as my computer.
Randy: Please be informed that you will get $50 as discount if you place the order now.
Randy: Would you like to place the order for it now?
Visitor: I need it for school, is there any way to get it cheaper?
Randy: May I know whether you are a higher education student or a teacher or K-12 student?
Visitor: I am a senior in high school
Randy: Okay.
Randy: Let me check that for you.
Visitor: Thank you
Randy: The full version of Photoshop CS4 Extended is priced at US $299.
Randy: Shall I forward the direct link to purchase it?
Visitor: Im a student, I live on my own, and I cannot afford that price?
Randy: Let me check that for you.
Randy: The full version of Photoshop CS4 Extended is priced at US $199 under student version.
Randy: Shall I forward the direct link to purchase it?
Visitor: Yes thank you

Lol brought it down to $200

Bullshitter's Anonymous?

If someone pirates something, they had no intention of paying for it, you didn't lose a sale, you just didn't make one.

Adobe Font Folio 11
* Upgrade from US $1,599.00
* Full from US $2,599.00
Exactly my point, $2,600 for some fonts.

"If someone pirates something, they had no intention of paying for it, you didn't lose a sale, you just didn't make one."

Not only is that true, but i wander how and where they get those numbers? I didn't know they were counting and i don't know how they count those numbers.

50 billion not going to the rich guys imo

Only 30 percent in the netherlands according to the chart, imho that not to shabby knowing that 28 percent of the dutch people cant afford to buy descent software on a regular base.

The again i guess its about busyness software ... which can be translated to a lot of people running a pirated version of windows XP on their home computers (according to an article in a magazine a bit back about 48 percent).

Imagine all these 48 percent of the windows xp users switching to BSD or Linux based systems which are way more affordable.
And now imagine when will the big software vendors lose more money if every one ran pirated but common software or when they run free and open source software ?

if ppl all of a sudden couldn't pirate software, they would just use the free-ware equivalents. the software market is the same as any other market (that doesn't have some horrible monopoly) you don't tell us how much something costs, we, the consumer decide how much something is worth.

Thats a load of crap.

90% of the people that download stuff like adobe photoshop and the likes are people that would never buy it in the first place.

So no, illegal downloads != lost sales

So the failing economy is responsible for all other forms of business losing money but products built by 1's and 0's isnt effected by it?

So they are saying they didnt lose money for the same reasons many others have but instead its due to piracy?

Ok, let me try this again. When the automotive business goes under its the economy, but when the digital industry loses money its because of Piracy?

Wait Wait, Im still not getting it. Did internet Pirates cause Crysler to go bankrupt?

Companies like Adobe should almost be happy people are doing this. The people and companies that actually NEED these products generally buy them anyway while average people like you and me give these products a lot of good rep. I know if software Adobe Photoshop and Sony Vegas weren't potentially free, most people wouldn't know or care about them at all. This raises more interest in the subject which potentially results in more people going into career fields utilizing these products because an interest was sparked from a torrent. But it is still stealing... maybe 50/50 good and bad eh?

Many people who pirate software may well not have bought it anyway. Yes software piracy is a problem and causes lost sales, but just how much seems inflated some what.

Whatever...$50.2 billion in lost due to piracy. It's quite evident that many software developers make their software free and/or easy to pirate to propagate the use of their software. Once they hit a certain critical mass they start to crack down. It's the ying and yang of software development. If there weren't piracy, there wouldn't be billion dollar software companies. Let's put it this way... if you really wanted to protect software, it should come along with a hardware key that is required on the workstation. Piracy has helped software companies more than it has hurt it. The biggest problem for software companies are the myriad of talented programmers who are sick of working for draconian companies. Hence they start to contribute into open source giving back to mankind. Piracy... whatever. The gift of open source is the future.

This is a complete BS. When I started learning cubase, I would download all the plugins through torrents. Now I got a steady job and bought all the software plugins, including 500$ Cubase 5. Without torrents/downloading, I wouldn't learn about them.

how do they know how much software in use is pirated? if they knew that... then that would make them either psychic, or incredibly good at breaking into everyone's computers and checking the validation codes on all of the installed software. Seeing as I know that no one will get in through my firewall without my knowledge, that makes them psychic... so the obvious next question is, "why don't you divine a solution to the problem instead of telling us how bad of a problem it is?"

There should be a methodology included or linked with the paper.. it will tell you if they considered things like sales behavior or how they calculated.

Inferences made by the sponsor partner (BSA) is not part of the research i think. you have to read the fine print to really get the full picture, which i'm too lazy to do for people here... but there is a systematic way of doing it.

Of course there should always be a % of error included, but i don't think they release that publically... only to the sponsors.. or BSA in this case...

Remember this?
"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else"

http://www.informationweek.com/new [...] ed_IWK_All

case dismissed

BSA= Bull Shit Association

ok grnted i am a game art design student , and i disagree with piracy greatly as it is theft ofrom ain industry i hope to make aliving at some day , but

this is total bullshit that they are spewing jsut to give companies such as EA Justification when they try to F--k thier customers over with invasive DRM schemes.

what i don't get is how they can bull shit these figurs and say it equals a loss of sales , do they go around knocking on dorrs asking folks if they pirate this or that game , and do they ask those peopel "if the bought said product afterusing eh priated copy as a demo" , or do they ask them if they ever itneded on buying the software ???

quite frankly i'm tireed of this general buisness policy or reporting losses antime a company doesnt make 200 or 300 % profit margins , fact and figures show a company could run quite healthly with just a 50% profit margin , but really any tiem a company reports a milions ammount loss ,all they really are sayign is we didn't make 200 % or more profit instead we only made XX% of profit. bassicly to get their report they comprea this year's quarter to the same quarter of last year and if fugures are lower (at any ammount lower) they say it is a loss. same can be said for this whole piracy BS. the company(ies) SAW no real loss , they just didn't line thier pockets any extra above what they did the prievious year which really gives a skewed image of a companies health.

again i my self an majorly against piracy , but i'm even more against BULL SHIT , and i have ahd it up to my neck with companies "Poor little rich me " bull shit they pull on reports like this.

Do they consider each piece of unlicensed/pirated software as lost income equal to the licensing price? if so, the actual loss would be loser to 500mio - and if not, then the value of pirated software must be a huge number!

Happy to do my part.

Yes I did rip photoshop, but only to play around with. I'm not an artist by any means, some of us just want to have some fun...
ames on the other hand, I play free ones when I can't afford any, and still do pay for games I want. My legit collection has been likely $2000 in games... hell I even bought WinXP twice.

But like hell I'm paying for photoshop...

IMO, piracy sucks but its a nessacary evil to thwart the evils of these software publishers (EA in particuliar) I cant count the number of times that I bought a digital download of some program and got hosed over by some stupid ass DRM bs or SecuROM crashing my DVD burners registry entries, to which EA has not responded to either my emails or letters that i mailed them

it doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize that I need to modify my registry entries for my DVD burner, because everytime I run Spore in Vista, I suddenly lose my DVD burner from "My Computer"

Personally, I like that Blizzard has stepped up to the plate with the new Battlenet site now I can toss my old CD's and just do digital downloads directly from them, and I still love Steam and Stardock's online distribution

Compared to EB Games / Gamestop's bullshit site, which you cant even update/patch the games you download from them

So i consider pirating the games I purchased to be ethically morale because I did in fact PAY for the game, I just didnt pay for DRM BS and limited download/activation crap

The only question I have regards to the BSA, Is how the hell do we know these numbers are even close to being correct?

Also, how many of downloaded stuff from "illegal" sources is done by persons that already own license for that software.

For example downloading XP SP2 instead of plain XP i own just not to bother with downloading all those patches everytime i want reinstall.
Or modified XP instalator so i dont need to supply SATA drivers on floppy disk whitch i dont use last 10 yers, but yet damn M$ still require it.

So i gues M$ and others want me to pay 19 additional licences for each XP image i ever downloaded to use it on SINGLE PC.

Anyone sane can see that those studies are total bul***t.