UK Piracy Levels Falling
May 14th, 2008
The BBC reports that the piracy levels in business in the UK are falling for the first time in 3 years. The piracy rate has fallen 1% to 26%.
Despite the fall in UK piracy rates and 66 other nations studied in the report, the global rate of piracy grew during 2007.
The average global rate of piracy now stands at 38% - up three points on 2006. The BSA said this was because sales of PCs grew fastest in countries where piracy was rampant.
Armenia now tops the rankings of nations with most pirated software. The BSA estimates that 93% of software used in the country is pirated. The US has the lowest rate at 20%.
photo: Johny hanging…
The BSA (Business Software Association) claim the reduction in piracy is due to education.
Perhaps it’s partially due to that, but I think other factors are at play.
First of all, Microsoft has essentially been giving away it’s flagship products for free or a very low prices to students. Certainly students and teenagers used to use a lot of pirated software because they have no income of their own, no credit card or way to buy software and also have greater knowledge of how to use programmes such as P2P. I believe quite a few people have been taking up the offer of discounted software from Microsoft so I think this has helped in reducing piracy.
Secondly, with so much good quality open source software out there these days there is no good reason to buy pirated software. Open source software is usually at least as good as their commercial counterparts and are much easier to obtain than their commercial counterparts.
I’ve been thinking about the economics of open source software. It’s surprising that software which costs absolutely nothing could be economically sustainable especially when so much of economic theory says that software which is developed by commercial companies should be much more innovative and of a higher quality.
I really don’t agree with software piracy but I think with the wide availability of decent open source software, I don’t think there are any good reasons for it either.
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