Ars Technica have posted a piece on the BSA’s recent piracy study, the conclusion of which is that digital file-stealing is actually stunting economies around the world to a significant degree.
If the amount of software piracy in the US were to be reduced by 10 percentage points over the next four years, IDC believes the end result would be $41 billion in economic growth, $7 billion in additional tax revenues, and the creation of over 32,000 new jobs. In countries with higher rates of piracy, the impact would be even greater.
And it’s at this point that my understand of economics fails, because aren’t those people who aren’t spending money on pirated good actually spending the money they would have spent on something else? And if there’s no money to be spent on the games in the first place, necessitating piracy, where would all this extra cash come from? Hmm.
