Briefly: Piracy value growing, Shure E4c, Yahoo VoIP

In brief: The value of pirated software worldwide increased in value to $32.7 billion from $28.8 billion in 2003, and is expected to climb as high as $200 billion in five years.... Shure today has begun shipping its E4c sound isolating earphones, which combine the "studio quality sound that listeners have come to expect from the E Series with a sleek, lightweight design to complement today's popular listening devices."... Yahoo plans to improve the PC-to-PC voice communications feature of its Yahoo Messenger instant messaging service, replacing the current walkie-talkie technology with a persistent voice connection.... iRiver has launched in Korea the T10, a new sports MP3 player expected to debut in the U.S. this summer.... TEN Technology has upgraded its naviPlay Bluetooth kit for iPod to connect wirelessly to a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone.

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birdman

What's the real value?

05/18, 1:37pm, EDT

I'm curious what the actual sales value lost is. If it were 100% impossible to pirate Photoshop, people would just use iPhoto or their scanner's OEM software or the crappy image editor that comes with Windows. Would Adobe then claim they "lost" money because Apple ships iPhoto with its machines? Of course not. So how much money was truly lost to people who would otherwise purchase software if it were impossible to pirate, vs. how much money was "lost" to people who weren't going to buy the software anyway?

My local Honda dealer "lost" THOUSANDS of dollars last year because I decided to put off buying a new car until 2005... but that doesn't mean I went out and stole a Civic off the lot.

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cmoney

Re: what's the real valu

05/18, 2:25pm, EDT

Not only that, but I wonder how many companies increase the price of their products to offset losses by piracy. So it becomes a never ending cycle: we lost $10 million to piracy so we're increasing prices by $100 each. next year, oh my gosh, we lost $11 million to piracy! But in fact it's because of increased prices. How is it possible to truly account for all those variables when claiming losses to piracy.

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resuna

Real value: $0.00

05/18, 3:21pm, EDT

The value of any product is what you can get for it. The real value of pirated software, then, is close to $0.00, because that's its resale value (even on eBay).

The value of the lost sales? That's still a fraction of the full price.

My job provides a Windows laptop, and bought me a copy of Photoshop for Windows. I wanted to use Photoshop on the Mac, but I couldn't afford to buy it for OS X, and I didn't really NEED it... there was always The Gimp. Eventually I found a remaindered copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 for $30 at Purplus. It does everything I actually needed Photoshop for. So, that's what it was worth to me.

Now, does this mean Adobe lost a couple of hundred bucks because I didn't buy their OS X version of Photoshop?

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