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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

It seems there is a very strong correlation between software piracy and GDP per capita. This may point to a cause for software piracy, namely that many people simply can't afford the software they need or want.

In Armenia buying Microsift office would set you back roughly 1.2 months pay. (rough numbers here: office $500, Armenian GDP per capita $4900 according to wikipedia)

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This reminds me of how international editions of books are sold at discount rates to match local economies. Also, DVD region encoding. There doesn't seem to be any equivalent for commercial software.

If that is true, I'll start questioning why the price of the DVD LOTR Trilogy Extended Editon here, costs us around a third of average monthly salary.

There are other factors at play.

I suspect it is a causation, not correlation. I'm from Malaysia. The cost of Photoshop CS3 Extended here is about 4 times average monthly salary.

causation leads to correlation no?

Yes I agree. I just want to emphasize the "causation" effect because people here generally dislike piracy but they don't have a choice. The price is so expensive. It's either we pirate it or we don't use it at all.

It's kinda remind me of why the President of Romania told Bill Gates that "piracy helped the young generation discover computers". http://techdirt.com/articles/20070201/224452.shtml

Point taken :-)

Yes, but a correlation does not mean there has to be a causation.

Sorry if I didn't make my original point clear enough.

I don't think that it's a direct correlation. It's more about culture and knowledge. Most of armenians, azerbaijans and moldovans don't even KNOW that software can be bought.

PC by itself is a huge amount of money for them (and many of them get it free from rich relatives that make money in Moscow, Europe or US) and everything that is inside is considered already overpriced.

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