According to a white paper by IDC and commissioned by Microsoft, businesses will spend $114 Billion in 2013 to deal with malware that was installed through the use of pirated software. Consumers will have to spend 1.5 billion hours in total to deal with malware from pirated software.
The paper, “The Dangerous World of Counterfeit and Pirated Software: How Pirated Software Can Compromise the Cybersecurity of Consumers, Enterprises, and Nations … and the Resultant Costs in Time and Money,” also reported that 78 percent of pirated software is attached with spyware. And out of all installed software that was pirated, 45 percent of users stated that due to major problems the software was eventually uninstalled.
Source: Peter Butler, “New Microsoft study says your software is counterfeit,” CNet, March 25, 2013.
Read the white paper at Microsoft’s website here (PDF).
The Country Manager for Microsoft Nigeria stated to the media that companies were losing up to 80 percent of their profits due to software piracy in the country. In addition to the lost profit, companies and consumers were force to spend additional time and money in addressing the security problems raised from pirated, unlicensed software.
Officials from Microsoft calculate that consumers in Nigeria would spend 1.5 billion hours dealing with pirated software in 2013. They will also spend up to $22 Billion repairing issues arising from malware that is able to infect computers from unlicensed software.
Source: Adeyemi Adepetun and Gbenga Salau, “‘Firms lose 80 per cent of profits to piracy, others’,” Guardian (Nigeria), March 10, 2013.
Nehru Place, a large commercial and business center in Delhi, India, is responsible for generating almost half of all legitimate software sales in the country.
Young children between the ages of 13 to 18 sell pirated copies of the software in front of the legitimate stores for prices a little as $2 (100 Indian Rupees). The area is thus responsible for up to 60 percent of the pirated software market.
Authentic, licensed software sold in India can cost up to 30 times more than the pirated version sold in the streets.
Source: Jason Overdorf, “India: Pirates! Caught on tape!,” GlobalPost, March 3, 2013.
The National Library Department reported that up to 25 percent of software used in computer labs at small to medium sized private schools in Jordan are pirated copies.
Across the entire country, the piracy rate of software in 2011 was reported to be 58 percent.
In the first month of 2013, over 95 cases of intellectual property violations of software was refereed to the court system.
Source: “Jordan to continue crackdown on pirated software,” Al Bawaba, February 18, 2013.
In 2012, intellectual property officials and trademark attorneys seized over 185,000 pirated DVDs, CDs and books in Jordan. 467 IP violations were sent to the court system, with 55 cases involving the sale of pirated Microsoft programs.
Authorities stated that most of the pirated software in Jordan is smuggled into the country from Syria. Due to the ongoing conflict in Syria in 2012, the rate of pirated software being smuggled into Jordan dropped by 70 percent.
Source: Mohammad Ghazal, “Pirated software smuggling from Syria declined in 2012,” Jordan Times, January 29, 2013.
In a 2012 investigation conducted by Microsoft, the company purchased 169 PCs from retail stores in China. Every single PC purchased was installed with pirated Windows software. In addition, 91 percent of the computers were installed with malware or other types of security vulnerabilities.
Source: Michael Kan, “Microsoft: Most PCs running pirated Windows in China have security issues,” Computerworld, December 13, 2012.
Computer Software Maker Adobe reported to the media that there were 55 million pirated activations of its popular photo-editing software Photoshop in 2012. The head of its anti-piracy unit also stated that the company tracked up to 6,000 illegal activations per day of pirated copies of Photoshop that were 7 years old.
(Software Piracy Rate by Country)
Source: David Kravets, “Hollywood’s Total Piracy Awareness Program Set for January Launch,” Wired, December 6, 2012.
According to media reports, a pirated copy of Microsoft Office Software is available for purchase on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand for about $9.70 (300 Thai Baht). A legitimate version of Microsoft Office would cost $200.
Software piracy in Thailand is estimated to cause losses of $852 Million a year.
(Software piracy losses by country.)
Source: Patrick Winn, “Running bootleg software in Asia? Beware U.S. lawsuits,” Global Post, October 23, 2012.
The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines stated that the software piracy rate in the Philippines was 70 percent in 2011. Between 2008 to 2010, the rate of software piracy in the country was 69 percent.
(Click to see all software losses by country)
Source: Matikas Santos, “Government intensifies campaign against software piracy,” Inquirer, August17, 2012.
In a May 2012 report, search engine company Google reported that it takes down over 1 million links to websites selling counterfeit goods and pirated materials a month. The 250,000 links taken down in an individual week in 2012 is more than the total number of links taken down in 2009.
The report showed that Microsoft had the most links taken down by Google to enforce their copyrights, with 520,289 links to sites selling pirated software being taken down in the past month.
Source: Jeff John Roberts, “Google takes down 1.2 million search links a month over piracy, copyright issues,” Gigaom, May 24, 2012.
