Posted on 05/23/2005 9:22:56 PM PDT by angkor
HONG KONG, May 20 Asia Pulse - The use of pirated software was the most popular in Vietnam among Asian countries in 2004, with the piracy rate standing at as high as 92 per cent, according to a report released Thursday by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in Hong Kong.
China came in second at 90 per cent, followed by Indonesia, which registered 87 per cent, the report said.
It was found that 52 per cent of the computer software used in Hong Kong was pirated, which cost software manufacturers US$116 million in losses.
The BSA warned that the prevalent piracy activities in Hong Kong will hamper the special administrative region's efforts to develop the island into a knowledge-based economy and a regional center for innovative and information technologies.
The report was based on a survey conducted in collaboration with the International Data Corporation in 23 countries last year.
According to the BSA in Taiwan on Wednesday, Taiwan's software piracy rate stood at 43 per cent for the third consecutive year in 2004, for the third lowest figure in Asia after those for Japan and Singapore.
(CNA)
The perennial lie from BSA. Piracy in third-world countries "costs" exactly nothing, since a reduction in piracy will not translate to increased sales. The sales volume of the $350 MS Office, for example, would be precisely zero in Vietnam with its $2000 per capita annual income (would you spend 17 percent of your annual income on MS Office?).
Tangentially, is the pirated DVD of Star Wars III available at Mangga Dua Mall in Jakarta yet? It's been almost 5 days now.
I guess Vietnam, China, and Cuba switching to Linux will be no great loss to Bill Gates. They never buy anything, anyway.
Angkor,
Rumor has that here in China, the movie was available on DVD this past Sunday. From what my sources tell me is that the quality is the "in the theater" recording style but the best possible in that format. No people talking, getting up to go to the bathroom, smoking....and the sound was pretty good.
I will research this further and report back.
Nah, perfectly sensible and demonstrates the predictable outcome of Marxism: poverty.
Start taking money out of hollywood and they might have a different political view.
DVD piracy is rampant outside of America. I predict that Star Wars III will be available from the locals here in Iraq this week, with Thai, Bahasa, and Cantonese subtitles (though not Arabic). The video will be shot from a theatre screen though.
Hmmm....whom do you think are their wholesale suppliers?
Kill Bill II was available in Jakarta while still in U.S. theatres (the Academy Awards reviewing version no less). Jet Li's Hero was available on DVD 1 year before Tarentino released it to U.S. audiences. In Cantonese with English subtitles only.
From what my sources tell me is that the quality is the "in the theater" recording style but the best possible in that format. No people talking, getting up to go to the bathroom, smoking....and the sound was pretty good.
I recently watched the shot-from-screen version of Troy. Only one head moving across the video (a woman apparently headed for the restroom), but the "cinematographer" did stick his elbow into the lower right corner too many times. Bahasa and Thai subtitles as usual.
From another perspective, a well qualified and experienced IT professional might make US $400/month here (Thailand); a teacher, US $150, which is less than the cost of Windows XP. A teacher has to work about 5/6 weeks to afford to buy a copy of XP! Office Pro is about US $500.
Yes, Linux is an alternative, and some governments are encouraging Linux both for their own use as well as for their citizens, but Linux takes more sophistication and experience to use and troubleshoot - experience that most people gain on Windows first.
To make matters worse, it is illegal (against the EULA) to use Microsoft, and I would guess most other, software in the country other than which it was purchased or licensed to use, so a consumer here has to pay $500 for Office, not the $350 you quote because of higher distribution costs due to poor distribution efficiency and competition in these countries.
It's not suprising that people turn to pirated software in Asia or that the Thai government exempted itself from the anti-piracy laws here. I agree that the loss figures that BSA spouts are utterly phoney. No way can people afford expensive software in these countries, and it is outrageous that then cannot even shop the globe for the cheapest price.
No argument from me. I agree 100 percent.
Can't wait to hear Microsoft's next BS assertion that piracy in Vietnam, Thailand, Indo is "damaging" its business.
That's something only your insular American couch potato and CNN devotees might believe. Or the sleazy cabal of BS artists on K Street and Capitol Hill.
So you support Chinese and Vietcong piracy?
"Jet Li's Hero was available on DVD 1 year before Tarentino released it to U.S. audiences. In Cantonese with English subtitles only."
Actually, Jet Li's Hero was already released in Hong Kong for TWO years prior to the US release. :) Not every movie gets released in the US first.
You'd think all these whiny IT folks that complain about outsourcing could think of a way to stop piracy. There has to be some way to code, write, or lock a medium device or download to prevent duplication.
You are misconstruing what I said, which is that BSA does in fact lie when it asserts that Vietnamese and Chinese (and Indonesian, Thai, Indian, etc) piracy "damages" American business. I did not make any moral or ethical statement about piracy, but I do abhor PR spin.
You mean I bought out-of-date pirated goods!?
I wuz robbed!
So when people in China and Vietnam make illegal copies of American products, and distribute them wherever they like including back to America without paying for them, you claim this doesn't damage those American businesses?
There you go, changing the scope of my statement yet again.
I was talking about the domestic markets in third-world countries, not exports of cheap copies to the industrial West.
What you seem irredeemably hardheaded about is this: the $3.00 pirated DVD in [Vietnam, China, India, Burma, Bangladesh, Iraq, etc.] is more expensive on a cost-of-living basis than the $19.95 legit version sold in America.
Using a 10x cost-of-living adjustment (which is quite conservative), that $3.00 pirated DVD is more like $30.00 in third-world buying power.
Conversely, that same cost-of-living normalization would make the cost of a $19.95 legitimate U.S. DVD more like $199.95.
So if Hollywood raised domestic pricing on U.S. DVDs to $199.95, would you be buying them? NFW. Will Hollywood start selling $3.00 DVDs in the third-world? Again, NFW.
As for the cheap shot-from-screen vids, precisely which market is that "damaging"? The "I hate movie theatres" market? The "I'll wait for the video" market? The "No movie theatres within 100 kilometers" market?
Boy what a lot of words. It's really simple supply and demand. Oversupply hurts demand. See, simple.
Did you read those words?
The demand for $199.95 DVDs or $5,000 copies of MS Office in third-world countries is precisely zero.
There is value, lost, no matter how much you try to diminish it.
Feds bite BitTorrent
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/25/technology/piracy/
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Federal agents launched a crackdown on users of a popular new technology used to steal the latest "Star Wars" movie and other large data files off the Internet, immigration officials announced Wednesday.
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