Study: Software Piracy Up for Second Straight Year
Posted by Daniel Fleshbourne on 10 June 2002 - 12:43 · 19 comments & 110 views
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LONDON (Reuters) - Global software piracy increased for the second straight year in 2001 due to lax laws and the growing availability of bootlegged software on the Internet, watchdog group Business Software Alliance said on Monday.
The alliance said in its annual study, now in its eighth year, that it lost nearly $11 billion in sales to software piracy in 2001. A more telling statistic, it said, was that 40 percent of all new software installed by businesses last year was obtained on the black market, up from 37 percent in 2000.
"In the seven years that we have conducted this study, this is the first time piracy has increased for two years in a row," said Beth Scott, vice president for the group in Europe. This is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that more and more software companies are moving their distribution systems to the Internet."
Hint of Future
The latest version of the software gives evidence to the new direction the company hopes to take the P-to-P application with the 2.0 version, making it a cornerstone on which to build other services and applications.
Morpheus 1.9 includes a chat client, dubbed Morpheus Messenger, which is compatible with America Online's Instant Messenger. Additionally, a Plus version of the messenger offers full-motion video conferencing for a fee of $9.95 for three months, or $24.95 yearly.
The new software also includes Morpheus Shopping Club, an e-commerce platform that offers users cash rewards when they make purchases with the company's retail partners.
Phone Service, Too
Morpheus 1.9 users can also enroll in the Morpheus Minutes program that provides users with competitively priced long-distance phone service. The service, which is billed to the user's phone bill, costs $4.95 a month and then 5.9 cents per minute for state-to-state calls. If users chose to have it billed to their credit card, they pay $4.50 a month and then 4.5 cents per minute.
The new features make Morpheus 1.9 a far cry from the preview edition, which is more of a pure P-to-P file swapping application.
StreamCast, formerly known as MusicCity Networks, did not say when the 2.0 version will be rolled out, or what other services and features it has in development.