IMSTA PIRACY SURVEY: 3708 Responses, 83 Countries, 5 Continents

IMSTA's "Let’s Talk Piracy" survey was designed to gain a better understanding of what music software users think about the subject of "software piracy," and how IMSTA can best respond to help reduce piracy rates.

IMSTA's goal was to open the line of communication between music software users and music software companies. Since IMSTA's efforts are educational, music software users had the opportunity to say what was on their minds, without the fear of prosecution.

This was evident in the results as the respondents freely talked about using pirated music software and their reasons for doing so. Some had even thanked IMSTA for conducting such a survey and welcomed the opportunity to let everyone know why they are using, or have used pirated music software. Others expressed their contempt for the use of pirated software and offered suggestions about what could be done to reduce piracy.

In total, IMSTA had 3708 responses from 83 countries, representing every continent of the world - except Antartica. Respondents included professionals, semi-professionals, hobbyists, instructors, and students.

	The results of the survey are available to all IMSTA member companies. If you have not yet received yours, please contact p.fattahi@imsta.org for a copy. CONTEST WINNERS Since most respondents took the time to type additional comments in the text boxes, we will pick the best comments and submit them to our member companies who would then vote on the top 5.

We will contact the winners as soon as all the votes have come in. You may also check the IMSTA web site since we will have the winners listed there as well.

Just for laughs, here is my favorite comment:

Morgan from Australia said, "This entire survey is completely biased against those who share/pirate software.  Yes, we are aware that it's wrong. But maybe we're not in a situation where we can spend $900 on a piece of software.  Maybe we think that, to make the music we want to make, that software is the best, or only way."

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