- Monday, 13 July 2009
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No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had - Samuel Johnson
Piracy is on the increase in Asia
AS MORE people get computers in Asia-pacific, the more piracy sky-rockets, according to the pirate hunters the Business Software Alliance (BSA).
Quoting IDC figures, the BSA claimed that the rate of nicked software in the Asia-Pacific region increased to 59 per cent of the software in use. This is up from 55 per cent the previous year.
If it had not been for low piracy states like Australia, Japan and New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific piracy rate would be higher than 70 per cent.
China is the worst offender in terms of numbers because it is so big. As PC use has grown in the Land under Heaven so has the amount of dodgy software circulating.
BSA's members, which include Vole, Apple, McAfee, claim that they lost $14 billion to piracy last year in the region. This is up from $12 billion US dollars in 2006.
The BSA said that China's software piracy rate had fallen in three previous years but held steady at 82 per cent from 2006 to 2007.
The worst place in Asia-Pacific for piracy was Bangladesh with 92 percent, followed by Sri Lanka's 90 per cent and Vietnam's 88 per cent.
The worst place in the world was Armenia which had a 93 per cent piracy rate. Despite all the bad press about pirating students, the US had the lowest rate with 20 per cent, the BSA said. µ
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...how they get to those numbers. If I would copy a piece of software I wouldn't run around telling everybody - so how do they know that X percentige of software is pirated?!

...but 93.576% of all statistics are fake anyway ;)
Maybe there is a correlation that in some asian countries a standard windows home edition license costs more than 2 monthly wages.
There also could be a correlation that where software piracy is the highest, the skill level of computer experts is highest since they can just go ahead and learn any kind and number of programs without the BSA breathing down their necks.
Heck most of them is happy if they can buy food after paying all taxes, not sending their money to some american megacorporation.
The official market price for Vista in China is what, around $70, and Chinese employees average apparently $3550 a year.
That makes for a hair less than $300 a month to live with, which is around $75 a week.
Okay, those who can spend a week's salary on an OS without budget problems raise their hands.
Apart the gas-guzzling SUV drivers, I don't think I'll see many hands raised, and I don't think it's any different in China.
More than anywhere else, China is a place where, if they can't have it via piracy, they simply won't use it.
So BSA can crow about lost sales all it wants, the truth is they should be happy about having any sort of presence at all, because if Chinese users couldn't get their hands on a pirate copy, Windows would still mean something you shut to stop the drafts.
1. Make software un-piratable using the new supa-doopa anti pirate technology (yet to be invented, TM & Pat pending)

2. Watch everyone switch to FOSS

3. Nett revenue gain - $0.00