
Avast sees single software license used illegally 774,651 times - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/avast-sees-single-software-license-used-illegally-774651-times-2010126/
======
jameskilton
"Over the course of 18 months that single Avast! Pro license was shared and
used on 744,651 different machines. At the current cost of $34.95 per pro
license, that’s total lost revenue in the region of $27,074,052.45."

No no no no no! You cannot prove that every single one of the illegal users
would have bought the software legally had they not found the key. This is the
same confounding logic the RIAA/MPAA keeps trying to use and it's still wrong.

Anyway, it is an interesting little statistic though I have to wonder if they
can actually litigate anymore given they let this go on for 18 months. It is
really illegal anymore?

~~~
ukdm
Later in the article:

"You can’t count all those users taking advantage of the license as lost
revenue, like the music industry does with song downloads. The Avast! Pro
license was there to be used, so people used it. If it hadn’t been on P2P
sites then the vast majority of users would have gone elsewhere for
protection."

~~~
AdamTReineke
Right, but with free alternatives available such as the fantastic Microsoft
Security Essentials, so you can't say that the industry lost $X in sales
because of the license.

~~~
ohashi
That's literally the next sentence.

>You don’t need to spend any money to keep your machine protected, especially
if you run Windows. Microsoft offers you a firewall as part of the Windows
default install now, and Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software is
free.

------
WestCoastJustin
What an opportunity! Those pirates obviously like your software but might not
be willing to pay for it. Rather than simply killing the key (turning off the
user base) they are trying to slowly convert these people to paying customers!
I like it and thank goodness they had the sense to do it.

~~~
arn
Yep, it's actually very interesting. In fact, it's possibly a great marketing
technique, if a polite offer to upgrade to the paid version converts at all.

~~~
trotsky
I think it's brilliant. Thinking about it, I'd do it intentionally at least
for AV. Once a typical AV customer has chosen one specific product and is
willing to buy it, I think it's very unlikely they will first look for a
pirate version of it. I dare say a large amount of their profits come from
retail or pre-installed trial conversions or high priced renewals. The mass of
1st tier AV available for $0-$10 after competitive upgrade rebates etc.
clearly shows they expect most of their money in the long run.

But imo someone looking to pirate AV is mostly going to choose a product out
of the options available for downloading. They may have a preference but if
it's simply not available they'll go for #2. Also, they may choose partially
based a reputation for working consistently - eg people report product x has
worked flawlessly for a year but product y is always being broken and needing
new cracks. Legit free versions may be option C.

If you accept my presumptions - AV makes most of their money in ongoing or
addons - and pirates are cost conscious but rather brand agnostic - any one
firm likely loses very little in sales by having their product copied.

On the other hand the firm gets the chance to have the user grow comfortable
with the software and all of the highest tier features if they don't cut it
off. Obviously there is a non-zero conversion rate here and importantly they
may no longer view free options as feature rich enough.

So by this logic it's actually in the best interests of the company to make
sure their product is widely available in pirate circles instead of fighting
it. Why let your competitor get a chance at a piracy conversion instead of
you? Not only that but you'd want to make sure it was a good experience -
trojan free - no bad cracks - up to date signatures - so the user had the best
impression of it.

It's the ultimate in price discrimination - giving it away free to those who
wouldn't pay anyway in hopes of future conversions - something they do anyway
with free after rebate deals - while ensuring the illicit nature of the
distribution keeps it from cannibalizing most legitimate sales.

------
vietor
They _did_ advocate piracy ... <http://www.avast.com/lp-talk-like-a-pirate>

More seriously, I wonder what the numbers are for the second most popular
pirated key?

And more generally, what is the frequency distribution of users per key like?
Is one pirated key dominant, are their competing rivals? What proportion of
users share their key among only a few extra computers?

Also interesting is the approach they are taking to handling this. It will be
very interesting to see what the conversation rate is, if they share that
information as well.

------
ck2
Doesn't Avast have a free version? (in fact I'm using it)

Why bother with Pro, seems unnecessary.

I guess the logic is those people wouldn't bother to pay anyway but I am
surprised they would allow their IP to ping the server in the first place.

~~~
jonknee
> I guess the logic is those people wouldn't bother to pay anyway but I am
> surprised they would allow their IP to ping the server in the first place.

Stopping an anti-virus from phoning home means you're out of date and every
day it has less value. That said, I suspect the vast number of computer users
would have no idea to prevent said ping (or even know it was happening).
Especially those in the market for AV software.

------
dools
It's actually kind of a good sales tactic since they can now contact each user
and tell them to pay up or switch to the free version. Like a viral trial ...

------
jrockway
_Rather than killing the license code, the team at Avast decided to watch what
happened and how many users would break the law by using it._

Which law are the users breaking?

~~~
azim
In short, copyright infringement. Wikipedia has more information on specific
laws:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement_of_softw...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement_of_software)
and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They're probably in breach of contract too, I expect there is a click-through.

In the UK they could probably be got for "hacking" (ie cracking) as they are
using the computer from which they download updates without authorisation and
breaching a security feature in order to do so this puts them in contravention
of the Computer Misuse Act (or at least on a naive reading, mine, it does so).

------
libpcap
Switch to AVG Free.

~~~
wh-uws
Switch to Microsoft security essentials.

faster. smaller. no spy/spam/ad/junkware

better

~~~
quicksilver03
And corrupts SVN checkouts, and who knows what else:

svn: Checksum mismatch for 'servers/dev/jboss/jvspoc_dw_loader/lib/jboss-
serialization.jar'; expected: 'f26ddb52dc01622d93625264f104b142', actual:
'838620288f1f8089176d015930a152dc'

No thanks.

