Hidden benefits of software piracy

Software piracy is bad. It creates an uncontrollable underground market, which might be used to fund criminal activities. P2P piracy is not that bad, since technically there is no profits involved for anyone, and potential losses for those who make the software. One thing needs to be emphasised, though. The losses that software companies incur are potential, every piece of software that is pirated does not equate to a lost sale. This leads to the first argument why software piracy is beneficial.

Many countries are still developing. The standard of living is so low that software is something that cannot be budgeted for. But getting out of the economic hardship requires using new innovative means of doing things, which in turn means that you need to use software. Here is where pirates come in: they allow you to use software for free or for considerably less than the actual price. This kind of unsanctioned “aid” to developing countries has already helped. Countries where software piracy is rampant, are considered to be making the biggest technological leaps (China, India, etc). This kind of development would never have happened if piracy did not exist. The same could be said for Estonia: many young people have become so proficient in IT because they use or used pirated software.

Secondly software as intellectual property is owned by Western countries, mainly the US. Forcing poor countries to invest in software drains their economies unnecessarily and even widens the gap between rich and poor regions of the world.

Thirdly software piracy encourages adoption of open source software. People who are tired of activation keys, registration codes, product activation and other extreme measures that pirates have forced closed source software companies to adopt, are more prone to choose software that they can control, modify, understand and contribute to. This in turn creates better software all around, because of the added benefit of increased competition.

Fourthly software companies need to compete with the pirates. In order to survive, they need to create new, innovative and easy to use distribution methods. They need to lower the price so that it does not feel outrageously high compared to the pirates. They must also reconsider the business model and perhaps transform the software into free software model, while building a business offering support services etc. (Companies that have already seen the benefit of supporting at least some open source software: IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, HP, Apple, practically any other major hardware or software company except Microsoft.)

So, as a conculsion: Software piracy is not a good thing for your karma, but sometimes there are good effects on bad deeds. My personal stance is that software should be free or considerably cheaper for those end-users who share, trade or use it in a way that they are not profiting from it.