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The SPA (Software Publishers Association) and its big sister, Business Software Alliance (BSA), who is the international software piracy monitor, are two organizations that are at the forefront of trying to stop software piracy.
The SPA reports the following international software piracy statistics (Elmer-Dewitt, 1994, p. 62): 95% Pakistan; 89% Brazil; 88% Malaysia; and 82% Mexico. Weisband & Goodman (1993, p. 32) report international software piracy occurs 90% in Asian countries (such as China, South Korea, and Taiwan); 80% in Italy; and 40% in the United States. Likewise, the BSA reports that 25% of all business software in the United States is unlicensed. It further estimates that "in 2001 the industry lost more than $1.8 billion in revenue in the United States alone." Software piracy also affects other economic elements as evidenced through the 111,000 lost jobs, $5.6 billion lost wages, and $1.5 billion lost tax revenues that occurred in the United States during 2001 because of software piracy.
BSA's primary targets are countries that market bootleg software. It represents "eight major U.S. software companies, works with law-enforcement officials in more than 30 countries to bring lawsuits against firms suspected of copying" (Weisband & Goodman, 1993, p. 33). These eight major U.S. software companies are "Aldus Corp., Apple Computers Inc., Autodesk Inc., Computer Associates, Intergraph Corp., Lotus Development Corp., Microsoft Corp., Novell Inc., and WordPerfect Corp." (Kabay, 1994).
Mexico has its own software piracy monitor, National Association of the Computer Program Industry (ANIPCO), that says "that at least 30 companies are now being targeted by the justice system" (Hope, 1993, p. 40). Jacinto González Gaque, ANIPCOs president, says "more than 75 percent of the software used in Mexico is illegal." BSA reports that 86% of Mexico's software is illegal, not 75% as reported by ANIPCO (Hope, 1993). In other words, for every original program, there are six illegal copies.