Report: 41 Percent of Personal Computing Software Is Pirated (According to the BSA - Business Software Alliance)

Submitted by MacRonin on October 12, 2009 - 8:03pm

Report: 41 Percent of Personal Computing Software Is Pirated: Via Threat Level.

The Business Software Alliance is taking the offensive, sending out millions of takedown notices the first six months of the year in a bid to combat piracy.

Reason: if the BSA is to believed, about 41 percent of all software on personal computers is pirated – socking the industry with some $53 billion in losses. That’s the size of the proposed 2010 budget for the state of Illinois.

The alliance, comprised of a host of software makers, ranging from Adobe to Quark, said in a new report Thursday that it has issued 2.4 million takedown notices worldwide to peer-to-peer networks the first half of the year – a 200 percent increase from the same period last year. When it comes to online auction sites, the BSA issued 19,000 takedown requests between January and June – a 4 percent increase from the same period a year ago.

Fear mongering aside, the report, Software Piracy on the Internet: A Threat to Your Security, also says the software piracy is becoming a growing tool for cybercriminals who hawk counterfeit software infected with malware. Scare tactics or not, we don’t doubt that counterfeited software could be filled with botnet-installing malware.

“Globally, there is a significant evidence to link software piracy with the frequency of malware attacks,” the report said. “While this correlation has not been measured with precision, the evidence from industry sources suggests that markets with high software piracy rates also have a tendency to experience high rates of malware infection….”

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