Unlicensed software costs SA R4 billion

If free 2 play games are anything to go by, you'd have 10 times less people using that software so it's more like 400 million.

Exclude windows because it's overpriced and pirating it has become the social norm due it's monopoly nature that figure drops a lot more.
 
Last edited:
HideInLight said:
If free 2 play games are anything to go by, you'd have 10 times less people using that software so it's more like 400 million.

Exclude windows because it's overpriced and pirating it has become the social norm due it's monopoly nature that figure drops a lot more.
Click to expand...

Are games even included in this figure? I would imagine the loss is measured in mostly in the business software industry.
 
Ol' Mean Bastid said:
how does this cost SA billions? It costs the software companies billions in terms of lost profits which obviously means loss of taxable income, but I think billions is an over statement
Click to expand...

Since most companies are foreign and not everyone pays tax on that licensed software, it's actually a win for SA. It would be less of a win and even a loss if Microsoft and Adobe were South African companies.
 
Arthur said:
It's naive to think that software vendors believe that every pirated installation is a lost sale.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I think it's naive to think otherwise too. Just as people pirate and you say it's unethical, businesses with vested interests lie and cheat. It's human nature.

Certainly Microsoft does not. It understands very well what is a real lost sale vs what would not be a sale.
Click to expand...

I'm skeptical.


It also very carefully tracks PC sales into sectors and segments, by industry and by usage type, etc. It does not consider a PLC controller, for example, as a candidate for Office. But is does believe that a certain percentage (say 45%) of PCs at say a university are probably platforms for inter alia word processing. Etc. When you crosscheck in the numbers of students in an educational sector, the PC installed base in that segment, the annual news sales, factor in PC retirements, competitive usage, shareware and freeware download and install rates, etc, etc, etc you begin to build up a pretty accurate picture.
Click to expand...

And they could all be using Open Office and do everything that most students use Office for, for free. Most people don't need the additional functionality that Office gives over Open Office or Libre Office.

GIMP is another case. Photoshop is a much better and more powerful program. But LibreOffice and others are just as good as Office for most people.
 
So things like Open Source software as well as old versions and cheaper competitors also cost money. And knowing how some of these companies push obsolescence - eg MS with Windows and Office, maybe the government should step in and pass a law which forbids the use of old versions of software?

These poor businesses are hurting so much.

It's like with National. They made a darn good microwave in 1986 and I still have it. LG, Samsung, Sharp and others must be cursing them. If my microwave was a piece of software, it'd be obsolete by now, many times over. Which is it, MS Word for DOS 1 or 2?

Considering that MS Word probably cost more than the quite expensive National m/w over I have, it's amazing what value for money most tangible good products are. But software becomes obsolete, often with the collusion of other businesses.

Yes I exaggerate a bit, but this is one reason why I have less respect for programmer's sob stories. Make your software last as long as a tangible good and no artificial obsolescence. And have warranties and assurances too. In addition software returns should be allowed. Some (Shareware) companies allow this. But most don't. It's a scummy tactic.
 
Ah, the global FUD marketing arm of Adobe and Microsoft regurgitates it's annual "piracy costs billions" spiel. Yes, it probably costs Adobe and MS a few billion but it's not like they'll miss it. And as for the local "channel", the profit on reselling their stuff lost to pirates is probably negligible. Those are not the types of users who would ever pay for the stuff anyway. Large corporates, where the money is at, will never install pirated software en masse and the smaller guys will just make do with free or cheap alternatives if the screws were tightened.
 
garp said:
Ah, the global FUD marketing arm of Adobe and Microsoft regurgitates it's annual "piracy costs billions" spiel. Yes, it probably costs Adobe and MS a few billion but it's not like they'll miss it. And as for the local "channel", the profit on reselling their stuff lost to pirates is probably negligible. Those are not the types of users who would ever pay for the stuff anyway. Large corporates, where the money is at, will never install pirated software en masse and the smaller guys will just make do with free or cheap alternatives if the screws were tightened.
Click to expand...

I would moan about losing billions, wouldn't you?
 
Fudzy said:
I would moan about losing billions, wouldn't you?
Click to expand...

Obviously the govt should authorise the BSA to go house to house and check old and new PCs for any pirated software. If any is found, penalties such as confiscation of all property, selling of children into servitude and women into prostitution should be used as remedies to help claw back some of these terrible losses the struggling software industry faces.
 
Space_Chief said:
Obviously the govt should authorise the BSA to go house to house and check old and new PCs for any pirated software. If any is found, penalties such as confiscation of all property, selling of children into servitude and women into prostitution should be used as remedies to help claw back some of these terrible losses the struggling software industry faces.
Click to expand...
Hehe.

Even better, let's have a government-controlled software industry. That way we can all chug around in reliable, affordable and standardised Trabants and Ladas. Who really needs anything more than DOS 3.1, WordStar and Visicalc?

As for PhotoShop: Digital photography has killed a once thriving photo development and printing business. Giving people the ability to manipulate images on their PCs has spawned a global racket in lying with pictures. Should be banned.

To ensure people get the best value, governments should compel people to use free open source software. People are too stupid to identify value and make their own choices with their own money. If only they knew, they'd switch to open source. But the global software cartel keeps people ignorant to protect its massive profits. There should be a law against that.

People are such sheep. Just look at the numerous governments around the world who went open source, only to abandon it two or three years later - they obviously have people who prefer to be captives of the global proprietary software industry.

It should be compulsory for PC makers to preload open source stuff. Just think - we could have Word and Excel compatibility without Word and Excel, photoshop without PhotoShop.

Yup. It's high time we freed ourselves from the real pirates, ie the software companies.
 
Last edited:
Well if Microsoft & the othervendors were to price their software more inline with the consumers' budgets maybe those figures would be lower
 
It's completely right for companies and individuals in developing countries to not pay for imported software.
 
And then there's the loss of integrity and ethical erosion...
Click to expand...
Well I don't think we can help those big software vendors or the BSA with their ethics or integrity.

Swa said:
I would also like to know the methodology used by the BSA. It wouldn't surprise me if they inflate the figures by including free alternatives as unlicensed.
Click to expand...
They've certainly been caught doing it before.
 
Why do people who pirate software not use the many free alternatives available? Why steal software when you can get almost all the functionality for free and without the legal and moral issues even being raised?

The question almost answers itself...
 
Last edited:
noxibox said:
It's completely right for companies and individuals in developing countries to not pay for imported software.
Click to expand...
Why only software? Why not apply the same principle to any imported items?

If you wanna see where that ends up, ask the Venezuelans. Or the Cuban Software Developers Association
 
Arthur said:
Hehe.

Even better, let's have a government-controlled software industry. That way we can all chug around in reliable, affordable and standardised Trabants and Ladas. Who really needs anything more than DOS 3.1, WordStar and Visicalc?
Click to expand...

That's quite an uncharitable approach Arthur. No-one said software should be ancient, but when your Word97 or even Word for Windows 2 (1993) does the same (for >90% of the users) as the latest and greatest and is purposefully made obsolete, to keep on charging people more money, you do know that there's something wrong. I'm sure that National Panasonic would love to pull the plug on my ancient microwave oven, or Samsung on my 15 y/o spare TV and so on would love to do the same. Now I do recognise that technology changes but in software it's not that much, and the old software could very well still run on the latest operating systems with some minor function loss, but as said for the non-cutting edge professional, it would not matter. And even for some professionals, working with older equipment, it also wouldn't matter.

As for PhotoShop: Digital photography has killed a once thriving photo development and printing business. Giving people the ability to manipulate images on their PCs has spawned a global racket in lying with pictures. Should be banned.
Click to expand...

Not everyone used photo labs. Some of us, living in Communist countries actually used our own paper, darkrooms and developed our own film.

To ensure people get the best value, governments should compel people to use free open source software. People are too stupid to identify value and make their own choices with their own money. If only they knew, they'd switch to open source. But the global software cartel keeps people ignorant to protect its massive profits. There should be a law against that.
Click to expand...

The software cartel is protecting itself. Who wouldn't. It would love to and uses the govt whenever it can, corporations do that as much as ultra left groups and orgs.

People are such sheep. Just look at the numerous governments around the world who went open source, only to abandon it two or three years later - they obviously have people who prefer to be captives of the global proprietary software industry.
Click to expand...

Most people, would be happy with open source alternatives or ancient second hand, discounted versions of software. But wait, such a market does not exist because, the soft is "obsolete"--the newest version does the same with a changed interface one has to re-learn and has x10 greater memory footprint and the activation servers don't work or the O/S fails to install (because the versions don't match).

It should be compulsory for PC makers to preload open source stuff. Just think - we could have Word and Excel compatibility without Word and Excel, photoshop without PhotoShop.
Click to expand...

LOL.

Yup. It's high time we freed ourselves from the real pirates, ie the software companies.
Click to expand...

Real pirates are those guys off the coast of Somalia.
 
I forgot to add that there is no real second hand software market of the type as the market in cars, books, CDs, DVDs, etc. Your software these days is tied to a license number. Often it gets validated once and you're out of luck or the activation server goes offline and your software won't work. Never mind that the industry does all it can to eliminate the second hand software market. Oh and regional restrictions... lol. Got a version of Windows you bought in USA or Japan? Sucks to be you but it's not licensed for use in this territory. Even if it activates, I'm sure a BSA audit would nail you as a pirate too.
 
Arthur said:
That's what people who steal cars also say.
Click to expand...

Well let's see. Do you think a car which uses aluminum, rare earths, plastic, leather, copper, a lot of manpower and electricity to assemble and so on, which also requires a service plan and has a ton of taxes built in, can be charged much cheaper?

Cost of replicating software: virtually 0. In fact 0, as the pirate does it with his own electricity and time.
Cost of replicating a car: A significant portion of the value of the car. Maybe even more than the R&D and profit.
 
GimmeMore said:
The assumption is that all of these individuals would have purchased the software, if they did not opt to pirate. I think this is incorrect as most of the people would not have bought the software anyway.
Click to expand...

This .... ^^ Quite honestly, I think piracy probably helps guys like MS stay dominant .. Imagine 30 % of those people downloaded Linux instead ... would make a lot of vendors sit up and take them more seriously from a support / driver / software perspective, creating a more "fair" market for OS's ... realisticly, I really dont think it would be long before people start saying "well for this licence fee I hardly get anything that open source wont give me ... never mind then" ....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X