Cut software piracy, boost UK economy?

[Trippledence]

An interesting sounding artical on the Register( http://www.theregister.co.uk/) poped up this morning..

A 10 per cent reduction in the UK's software piracy rate would result in 34,000 new jobs, £11bn of economic growth and a £2.8bn increase in tax revenues, according to a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance

This little bunch of statisitcs really got me, when you consider the most likely groups to pirate software, noteably students and hobbyists. Useing software for non comersical purposes who cant afford it in the first place.

So how can the economy grow that much? More likley that people would just have to move to open source alteritives. Such as Open Office and GIMP.

In my opinyon a much better way to encorage growth, in the software industry would to make it more open, so people can borrow pre witten sections of other programs, rather than haveing to waist hours recrating one useing a difrent method just to avoide a patent infingement.

Do you really thing the cost of software piracy is that high to the economy? Or are the compays who are falling behind to open source developers just trying to find an excuse?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12...ftware_piracy/

[Pazza]

I think it's not quite true as very little of the software industry is within the UK and it will only really benefits the big corporations. There are so many alternatives already on the software side but businesses are forced to use certain OS & office products.

[badass]

My take on this is that their calculations are based on everyone that has pirated software actually buying it would provide the benefits they suggest, in which case it is flawed as I expect the majority of people that own pirated software would not buy it if they had to pay for it.

[Oresa]

Reckon you're right, badass. If somebody uses a pirated copy of MS Office, it's probably because they like the interface. If you remove teh possibility of pirating, are they going to like that interface enough to warrant paying £119.99 for it, when they can download opensource alternatives like STAR, OpenOffice and Atlantis for free?? I think not.

[TheAnimus]

Reckon you're right, badass. If somebody uses a pirated copy of MS Office, it's probably because they like the interface. If you remove teh possibility of pirating, are they going to like that interface enough to warrant paying £119.99 for it, when they can download opensource alternatives like STAR, OpenOffice and Atlantis for free?? I think not.

Cost of re-training that employee, you'd be lucky to have change from a grand. So a buisness would just buy the software.

As for home users, well someone i know spent £600 on a new laptop, after their daughter dropped the old one. I got the old one, turns out it had a whole bunch of viruses on it (they'd been downloading naughty things!) The physical damage was only cosmetic. But these people aren't rich, they just don't have the technical knowledge + effort.

[Oresa]

Cost of re-training that employee, you'd be lucky to have change from a grand. So a buisness would just buy the software.

Maybe i'm being starkly naive here, but in my experience, companies don't tend to use illicit copies of office suites anyway, so their involvement in this situation is strictly limited. As for domestic users, don't you agree that the main offenders when it comes to piracy of expensive software (the suites aimed at professional business use) are not the users with very little technical knowledge + effort, but instead those who could be aptly pigeonholed as 'enthusiasts'??



O/T, Trippledence, what does your sig say?? I've been trying to figure out which font it's written in, but no joy so far

[TheAnimus]

Its staggering quite how many companies are using pirate office!

I'm talking SME here that don't have a proper IT stragergy (which so many don't!).

[iranu]

Bah, The topic header should read

Cut software prices, (and) boost UK economy

same can be said for music. It's just we live in Rip off Britain. How many times do you see products in th US have their $ price mathced in the UK with a £ price.

[DeludedGuy]

Bah, The topic header should read

Cut software prices, (and) boost UK economy

same can be said for music. It's just we live in Rip off Britain. How many times do you see products in th US have their $ price mathced in the UK with a £ price.

Nail on the head mate!

If MS Office was on sale for £30-50 I wouldnt mind paying, same goes for thier OS.

[Trippledence]

I saw an artical about the UK/US software prices in PCpro, it was amasing, something like photoshop you where looking at £50-£60 difrence!!!!!!

Riff off indeed.

[TheAnimus]

Gosh 50-60£ difference, thats the difference of VAT?

Flat rate tax, no socail state for thouse who aren't ill < 18. No houses for stupid people who have kids with no money (some steralisation required). Privatise as much of the government as possible so it has compitition to improve, and live the capitalist dream.

Software is one of the things i don't think we get ripped off on in britain exclusively, compared to hardware, cars and the like, its really not that bad.

Pricing software is ultimately a strange thing. Myself i think we should give better support with software really encorage people to use it to its full potential. Pricing software is like pricing music its quite difficult, how should you price it, by demand or by cost of developing?

[RVF500]

I have a bunch of software bought locally here such as Abobe writer pro and office 2003. I got them because they are affordable here. Would I buy them in UK? Not a chance. Unless they were pitched at a reasonable price the same as software games for example.

Most companies use licensed copies of software because the penalties for not obtaining liceses are heavy. Most employees of such companies who need software for design, project or presentation work get the software at work. If the software was sold at realistic prices then more people would buy licensed copies for personal use. The distinction should be drawn between single and multiple license users. That way profit margins can be maintained with corporate users paying for multiple licenses. While additional money could be made on private single license usage.

The same can be said of DVDs and CDs. Who cares if some multi-millionaire is losing money? If the industry wasn't so greedy then the market for piracy would be cramped and more people would buy more of the original product. Just shortsightedness on behalf of the software and multimedia industries.

[iranu]

The message should be, Pile it high sell it cheap. That's what they do in the states. Now obviously they have a larger market but that's what I thought the EU and the single market was about.

It's easier to make more money by selling alot of things cheaply than selling a few things at a large price, especially if your product can be copied and distributed easily. 5 minutes on google will allow a user to kno what bittorent is and 5 more minutes of searching can get you any piece of software you want.

This is why steam (when it works) is such a great idea. I want to download a legit piece of software for minimal price. You can see the poor thinking of people such as record companies when they charge 99p per song. Make it 20p and watch your profits soar. Or how about a BOGOF offer. Software and music companies need to learn how to sell like supermarkets and not Harrods.

[TheAnimus]

Okay say you write a specailist peice of software, say its a stock management system aimed at small stores.

How do you know what price to sell it? Because of the nature of software sale, there tends to be a migration away from retail, to direct selling. Its less of a gamble to start selling it at say &#163;500 a license per year Minimum 2 years. Now say you've sold 50 copies in your first year, and have a small firm of about 4 developers. Do you cut the price? The people who've provided you with the money to do that won't be best pleased if they get the rough end of the stick. You've got version 2 comming out, so you say, thouse who've had a license before can upgrade for only &#163;300 for a year?

Now it might start that low, but it gets to the stage were its not worth their while to sell lower. A lot of people are just ignorant and don't understand that their pirating software, the same way they don't realise how their server hasn't been patched in the last 2 years.

[RVF500]

The key here is licensing. A single user lisence for home users, perhaps with a restricted feature set, at an affordable cost. A corporate multi-user licensed 'full' version at corporate rates. Software is a capital expenditure so can be marked down as a loss giving soem tax relief to the companies involved. A bit of thought could well see that the high end corporate market is protected for the developer and additional profit made in the small users market. Which is where most of the piracy takes place.

There are already laws to enforce licensing so no change is needed there I would think.