Software piracy statistics paint a grim picture of software misuse and loss of revenue for tech companies. This results in lower-quality software and a plethora of unauthorized copies flooding the market.
Just like any creative product, software is protected by copyright law, which prohibits authorized usage or distribution. But in 2024, software piracy remains a significant problem for the tech industry.
In this guide, we’ll explore why software piracy is an acute issue in 2024. We’ll look at the key software markets, how software piracy thrives there, and its overall impact on the software market.
Later, we’ll consider the measures taken to prevent and combat this phenomenon, some future implications of software piracy, and the key challenges associated with it. Let’s get into it.
In This Guide
Key Software Piracy Statistics in 2024
- In total, there have been approximately 84.77 billion visits to software piracy websites from January 2017 to November 2023.
- In 2023, we saw another 15.2 billion visits to software piracy websites worldwide – up from 8.75 billion in the first eight months of 2022.
- In 2023, mobile software accounted for 36% of all pirated software, followed closely by desktop software at 30%.
- 38% of British people admitted to engaging in software piracy in 2022.
- Russia accounted for over 8.5% of all software piracy in the world in 2023.
- In the first eight months of 2022, the US saw 15.47 billion visitors to piracy websites.
- In 2023, software piracy was a major contributor to revenue loss for 40% of software suppliers – up from just 17% the year before.
- In 2023, as many as 33% of IT companies reported losing 6–10% of their revenue to software piracy, and 8% even said that the loss exceeded 30%.
Illegal Software Downloads Statistics
To kick things off, we’ll take a look at the numbers and figures on illegally downloaded software over the last few years.
How Much Software is Pirated
Overall, software was the second-most-pirated type of media in 2023, after TV shows, making up 26.2% of the pirated items on the web that year.
And although in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic (2017 specifically), the level of software piracy dropped from 39% to 37%, the pandemic years saw it go up again by 20-30%.
Muso reports that in 2023, there have been 15.2 billion visits to software piracy websites worldwide. That figure is a 14.1% YoY increase from 8.75 billion visitors registered in the first eight months of 2022.
These eight months showed a 10% increase in software piracy compared to 2021.
From January 2017 until November 2023, there were approximately 84.77 billion visits to software piracy websites. That’s like every person on Earth visiting software piracy sites 10 times on average over this period.
BSA tells us that almost 37% of all software on users’ PCs is pirated. The market value of this unlicensed software is $46.3 billion.
What Software is Pirated & How
As the following chart shows, mobile software was the most commonly pirated software in 2023, accounting for 36% of all illegal software downloads.
It was closely followed by desktop software at 30%. Moreover, it’s estimated that as much as 37% of software worldwide is unlicensed.
In terms of how the software has been pirated, the 2021 Muso report states that 73.5% of it was illegally downloaded from the web and the rest from torrenting sites.
The data tells us that 100% of all illegally downloaded software was pirated through web downloads in 2022 and 2023.
Most of the traffic (61.5%) was direct in 2022, but in 2023, 42% of it was via search engines when people looked for software piracy.
Software Piracy Statistics by Region
Software piracy is prevalent in many regions around the world. However, certain regions suffer more from it than others.
As this chart shows, piracy is particularly prevalent in China, Russia, the US, and India. Ukraine and Italy were also among the top 10 countries for piracy.
Let’s take a look at the biggest regions in the world for more details on software piracy.
EMEA
Europe may have robust anti-piracy laws, such as the EU Copyright Directive and the CPDA in the UK. But it nonetheless is home to significant software piracy.
For instance, the UK is among the top 20 countries for using pirated software.
In 2021, there were approximately 2.7 million British infringers of software copyrights, as you’ll see in the chart below. Moreover, as many as 38% of surveyed Brits had pirated software in 2022.
The post-pandemic spike in piracy is likely due to the increasingly high cost of living in the UK.
Other countries in the region have similar problems. For example, Russia accounted for over 8.5% of all software piracy worldwide in 2023.
This isn’t surprising, given the international sanctions and software companies pulling out of the region due to the geopolitical situation.
Ukraine and Italy take the seventh and ninth spots among the top 20 countries that use pirated software.
Iran is another country in the EMEA region that’s subject to sanctions that restrict the use of certain software, so it’s not surprising that Iran ranked eighth.
The Americas
In the Americas, the US, Brazil, and Mexico are leaders in illegal software downloads, ranking among the top 20 countries for software piracy.
The US ranked third in the world in 2023 for software piracy, and this is actually an improvement. One year prior, the US was top of the list for the highest rates of software piracy.
In the first eight months of 2022 alone, the US had seen 15.47 billion visitors to piracy websites.
As for the previous years, as you can see from the graph above, the US and Brazil had relatively small shares of visitors to software piracy sites.
The largest shares in that time period (2020–2021) were held by Russia (7.2% to 8.02%) and China (see below).
APAC
According to BSA, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has the highest rate of software piracy in the world – 61%. Given the number of APAC countries in the top 20 countries for software piracy, this isn’t surprising.
Take China, for example. In 2021, China had the highest number of visitors to software piracy websites in the world. In Q3 of 2021 alone, China had 467 million people visiting software piracy websites.
The figure made up 14.6% of all software privacy site visitors in the world that quarter (3.2 billion).
However, in 2022, India shortly overtook China, becoming the third country for piracy rates, after the USA and Russia.
However, according to Revenera, as of 2023, the PRC (excluding Hong Kong) is once again the leader in software piracy worldwide.
Other APAC countries in the top 20 are Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Australia. Regarding Australia in particular, BSA reports that 20% of Aussies use pirated software.
Impact of Software Piracy on the Market
In 2023, software piracy was a major cause of revenue loss for 40% of software suppliers – up from just 17% the year before.
This significant increase is a testament to the huge adverse impact of software piracy on the market. In 2023, as many as 33% of IT companies reported losing 6–10% of their revenue to software piracy.
8% even said that the loss exceeded 30% of revenue. Moreover, 15% of companies don’t even know how much they’re losing to piracy.
In addition to financial impacts, software piracy can adversely impact a brand’s reputation. In many cases, pirated software isn’t subject to quality control and can have a negative impact on user experience.
Moreover, in 2022, as many as 50% of people who downloaded pirated content, including software, reported malware infecting their devices.
It’s also worth noting that software is a type of creative work, and pirating it is just as harmful to creators as pirating music or books.
In practice, this erosion of IP stifles programmers’ creativity and harms their competitive advantage and revenue.
Addressing Software Piracy
The issue of software privacy is complex, and combating it requires a multifaceted approach. The stakeholders involved are legislators, technical experts, and educators, to name a few.
In this section, we’ll go over the building blocks of combating software piracy, including legislative and technical measures.
Laws & Regulations
Several international laws, such as the Berne Convention and the TRIPS agreement, standardize protection against any sort of piracy, including software.
Many countries have adopted their own laws on a local level, such as the Digital Economy Act in the UK.
However, the enforcement of such laws, on both a local and global scale, depends on the police’s capacity and international cooperation.
In addition to the legislation, there are a lot of case law and lawsuits illustrating the impact of software piracy. For instance:
These cases, as well as others, prove the adverse economic impact of software piracy. However, they also evidence the fact that the existing piracy protections aren’t always sufficient.
For instance, the German software company that sued the US Navy in the 2016 case received much less than the original $155.4 million in damages it claimed.
And a month ago, the judge in the Copilot case partially dismissed some piracy claims.
Technical Measures
Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools represent an important technical measure against software piracy. Such solutions are already widely used by creators and companies to protect their IP, such as software.
For software products, DRMs can range from license activation keys and cloud verification to digital watermarking and geographical restrictions.
Popular business software subscription models like SaaS are also a type of DRM in a way, as they allow users to subscribe to the software rather than own a copy of it.
Such DRM methods can be effective. But they can also be frustrating for consumers, as they’re often seen as limiting fair use.
What Does the Future of Software Piracy Look Like?
It’s not entirely clear what will await the murky digital landscape of software piracy. Based on current trends and how rapidly piracy methods are evolving, we believe the issue will only persist.
Before new laws and anti-piracy protections catch up, we might see a few new privacy developments.
New Methods of Piracy
With the advancements and developments of DRMs like SaaS, it’s reasonable to conclude that software piracy methods will also advance beyond what we know today.
And while AI can help combat these threats, we should also consider how it can assist malicious actors with new piracy approaches, such as reverse engineering.
For instance, given that SaaS is hosted on the cloud, pirates may target that infrastructure in the future to access the platforms.
Achieving that would require employing social engineering and phishing to steal credentials – two tactics prevalent in cybercrime today.
New Types of Piracy
In addition to new methods of piracy, the prevalence of SaaS and other subscription models might also encourage the development of new types of piracy.
It’s true that cloud-based SaaS deployment makes it challenging to download and distribute copies like traditional software pirates usually do.
However, the shift to a subscription model can cause increased instances of unauthorized account sharing and the rise of illegal monetization of subscription credentials.
To address this potential issue, companies might have to invest in more sophisticated DRM systems. For example, they can be powered by blockchain technologies.
Such technologies would help track the usage of SaaS licenses and curb unauthorized use.
Enforcement Challenges
Earlier, we touched upon the challenges of international cooperation in software piracy law enforcement.
The global nature of the Internet and the cloud, economic disparities, and international sanctions worsen these challenges.
For instance, although many SaaS companies have left Russia, their software is still available thanks to the country’s relaxed piracy laws.
It’s, therefore, challenging for companies like Microsoft to enforce licensing restrictions in such sanctioned regions.
Concluding Thoughts
Software piracy is a complex issue that remains prevalent today. In this guide, we reviewed the software piracy statistics around the world in recent years.
We saw that the APAC region takes the crown for software piracy, but Russia and the US aren’t far behind. We also saw that software piracy adversely impacts the software market and the tech industry as a whole.
And yet, addressing software piracy remains a significant challenge, not least due to tech advancements and ever-evolving piracy methods. Enforcement of piracy and copyright laws is also difficult in many jurisdictions.
However, technological advancements can also help hinder malicious actors. The key is to employ them smartly and have robust enforcement frameworks in place.
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