Top 10 Pirated Software of 2007

The SIIA released its Anti-Piracy Year in Review this week, noting that it reached its largest piracy settlement with an auction site and its first settlement through its Corporate Content Anti-Piracy Program.

The report from SIIA includes a top 10 list of the titles most pirated by companies and titles most pirated via the internet, much of which consisted of security tools from Symantec and productivity and design tools from Adobe – makes you wonder if Adobe’s high price points have anything to do with them being a prime piracy target. Ironically I also suspect the need for proper AV solutions could be the result of running infected key generators and patches. Funny how this works isn’t it…

2007 Software Titles Most Frequently Pirated By Companies

  1. Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
  2. Adobe Acrobat
  3. Symantec PC Anywhere
  4. Adobe PhotoShop
  5. Autodesk AutoCAD
  6. Adobe DreamWeaver
  7. Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator
  8. Roxio Toast Titanium
  9. Ipswitch WS_FTP
  10. Nero Ultra Edition

2007 Software Titles Most Frequently Pirated on the Internet

  1. McAfee VirusScan
  2. Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
  3. McAfee Internet Security Suite
  4. Intuit TurboTax
  5. Adobe Photoshop
  6. Adobe Acrobat
  7. Intuit Quicken Home and Business
  8. Symantec Norton pcAnywhere
  9. Symantec Norton Ghost
  10. Adobe Creative Suite

The trade association for the software and digital content industry said it received 427 reports claiming corporate end-user piracy and 17% of the tips were “judged sufficiently reliable to pursue.” The SIIA said that most of the pirated software consisted of productivity tools, including word processing, office suites, report design, and Web design.

In the report, SIIA touted its corporate software piracy case against Florida Benchmark, which cooperated with SIIA, conducted an audit, found it used unlicensed software, and settled with SIIA for $150,000. And, under its Auction Litigation Program, SIIA scored a $250,000 settlement forSymantec (NSDQ: SYMC) software in Symantec, et al. v. Chan, et al.

Also last year, SIIA expanded public education and outreach through new campaigns like: “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even,” which encourages consumers duped into buying counterfeit software to provide tips in exchange for cash. The industry group also published three new Software Buyer’s Guides on how to spot and avoid illegal software on auction sites.

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