Software firms exaggerate costs of piracy worldwide

The Software Publisher’s Association recently published a report concerning the costs of software piracy. According to the SPA, more than $13.1 billion was lost worldwide in 1995 thanks to software piracy. Lost by whom? Well, that’s not exactly clear. The implication seems to be that software publishers lost $13.1 billion, though that’s not expressly stated anywhere in the report. (However, in another SPA document, discussing losses in 1989, the phrase “lost revenues for software publishers” is used).
Such software-piracy figures often are reported by the media as software-publisher losses, and if you’ve always thought that’s what the figures were,…