Monday, October 30 12:00 AM ET

Pirate Software Association Study Shows Pirating Has Lower TCO than Paid

Beijing, China – A recent study by the Pirated Software Association (PSA) showed that businesses could spend less money using pirated proprietary software than software they bought.

Most TCO studies in recent years have focused on Microsoft's Windows Vs. the open source Linux. The PSA study showed that companies could "have their cake and eat it too" with pirated software.

The Sandman, Chairman of the PSA, said, "Let's say Company A purchases a 3,000 seat license from Microsoft for Word at $65 a seat. Company B installs 3,000 copies of Word using a cracked version. That's nearly $200,000 in savings for Company B, plus they don't have to use some Word wannabe like OpenOffice.org."

Craig Windheit head of Microsoft's License enforcement division said, "Yes, there is an upfront cost savings with using pirated software, but companies put themselves in legal jeopardy if they continue to use pirated software. You'd be surprised at how many companies we've put out of business and I'm not talking about from monopolistic business practices."

The Sandman said that small businesses could see the easiest savings. "Our cost-benefit analysis showed that small businesses could get away with pirating software much easier than large corporations. Our consultants aren't recommending widespread pirating for Fortune 500 companies… yet."

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