It’s not every day that someone freely admits to criminal behavior. Traffic tickets aside, few people are brazen enough to acknowledge serious crimes. Yet in BSA’s ninth annual Global Software Piracy Study, more than half of the world’s computer users readily concede they steal software.
Some users say they acquire unlicensed applications all or most of the time. Others say they do it occasionally or rarely. It adds up to a crushing problem. The net effect in 2011 was a global software piracy rate of 42 percent. Because of rapid growth in the world’s highest-piracy markets, the commercial value of all that stolen software jumped more than $4 billion year-over-year to reach a new record total of $63.4 billion. (more…)