Yes I believe the % is that high for some people, why? Let me give you my opinion about it because I know you care.. =)

Though I don’t really “Pirate” software anymore, while I was in school it was a requirement. I was a digital art major, and as some may know software in that realm of study can run in the hundreds and thousands even with educational discounts. I would say that easily 25% of the software installed on my PC at that time was pirated (though I did at times buy one version and pirate the next version out of necessity) Now take that figure (+/- 50%) and apply it to EVERY student that went to my school (about 2k) and you have a lot of pirated software, but its concentrated and it’s everyone who is 25 years old and younger.

Now that I’m 35, do I still have pirated software on my PC? Truthfully.. Yes.. But it’s much lower, more like 2%. However, now I do it to “try” software and if I like it I normally buy it. Being in the PC Game industry now I have a unique view of piracy at the moment, and fight for my company on a daily basis with people trying to make an illegal buck off of us by creating illegal CD Keys and such, but as DRM improves, and we move more towards a digital download model we hope to see less piracy in the next 10 years.

So, in conclusion I think that if you average the extreme user who demographically is most likely under 25 and could have 20 to 70% of all his/her software pirated averaged into the average adult over 25 who may have 1-5% you can easily get 25% as a median average.

>Spada

It’s the old “conflict of interest” thing. Microsoft has an enormous conflict of interest here. I would say it’s highly unlikely that they’re telling the truth or that they even know what the number of pirated OSs are. Besides, as you’ve pointed out, how would anyone know? Any estimate would have to be based on some indirect measurement like number of desktop pcs sold vs. number of Xp licenses.

I’ve noticed that people like to throw out “statistics” to “support” their otherwise unsupported opinions a lot these days. The sad part is that most people assume that a statement which includes some statistic like “25%” is an established fact without ever questioning the source, or more to the point, whether the number is actually true. How about the speed claims of web browsers? There’s been very little testing of the relative speeds of browsers, but they all seem to be the “fastest”.

Hello Spada,
You could have a valid point. But I guess my point was how does anyone, regardless of grouping or age, really know exactly how much pirating goes on.

Thank you for your comments. I enjoyed reading them.

Heh Tim,

Exactly. To many stats that have little or no substance attached. 22.63% of the people reading these comments are college graduates. How do I know? Because I said so. Trust me!!!! LOL

[…] Yesterday I had posted a article in which a Microsoft exec. had stated that 20 to 25% of all software being used in the US was pirated. Story here. And then I received a email from one of my fellow LG posters saying that I should do a follow-Up to my original post and include what else the exec. had to say, which was: […]

I believe MS want to play down the numbers as much as possible. Afterall, I rarely see a legit copy of XP LOL

t94xr,
Thanks for the comment.
Ron

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