By Sylvia Carr, 26 July 2005 12:55
NEWS Software ranks among the most popular categories of counterfeited goods - and the internet is only contributing to the rise in intellectual property violations.
During the month of June, $91m worth of entertainment media and software was pirated worldwide, up 13 per cent from December 2004, according to research from Canada's Gieschen Consultancy.
That's second only to counterfeit 'financial instruments' - currency, cheques, credit cards, treasury bonds and money orders - which had a total value of $509m in June.
Microsoft earned the dubious honour of the top IT brand to be pirated, and came in second overall to Nike. The rest of the names in the top 10 were retail fashion brands such as Adidas and Prada.
Microsoft has just announced a plan to crackdown on Windows piracy by forbidding users to download updates unless they can prove their copy is legitimate.
The internet is only exacerbating the piracy problem: 13 per cent of counterfeiters use spam, online auctions, retail websites and other internet tools to sell or distribute their wares, Gieschen said.
File-sharing technologies such as BitTorrent also play a "significant" role in the piracy of software, music, films and books, according to the consultancy.
While counterfeit software is on the rise, pirating of computer hardware has declined in the past six months. In December 2004 Gieschen reported $11.4m worth of counterfeit computer equipment and supplies, compared to only two such incidents with no dollar value in June.
The US leads the world in documented intellectual property theft violations with $87m in seizures and losses over the past month, followed by South Korea with a comparatively low $8m. The UK ranks fifth with $3m worth of IP theft.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. levee
This may be slightly off-topic, but the value of all this copyrighted material is debatable. Perhaps if the charges for media were more reasonable (especially in the UK), people would be prepared to pay for this stuff.
2. Fred Dibnah
I dont support piracy, but it only exists due to over inflated prices to the general public.
Retail 200 quid for Windows XP is probably why their is such an issue.
OEM PC's including XP OEM start at 250, do MS really need to make that much profit from the home user?
3. Pat the Rat
Software companies should not charge the inflated prices they do. If all retail MS Windows XP cost no more than the OEM version Microsfoft would still make billions and Piracy would fall by the wayside.
4. Simon Bazley
What an excelent story, what will happen over the next 5 years if M$ both prevent auto updates on illegal machines and move the OS goalpost further over the hill. Will a) everyone repent and buy legal copies of windows b) a massive number of Windows machines connected to the internet will slowly become virus ridden an unusable or c) Those people that can't afford or don't want to pay for windows slowly move to a Linux.
I hope it's (c), I'm expecting (b) only Microsoft's dreams will it be (a).
5. anonymous
Nice site.
6. anonymous
Great story