could anyone tell me how much money is lost annually in the computing industry (games,applications,etc.)through piracy,or where i could get some information on this topic

I did a quick search on "Software Piracy revenue loss" and found some links.

http://www.siia.net/sharedcontent/press/2000/5-24-00.html

This one is for 1999 and indicated 1 in 3 business applications in use in 1999 were pirated and that the software industry for US and Canada was about $3.6 billion.

I would try to find a less biased example. Microsoft publishes industry loss numbers, but given they''re drive to eliminate it, it makes sense.

Piracy is a big problem. I think the disgruntled worker turning in his big company for piracy forced a lot of companies to actually do license audits internally in the past few years (MS had the FBI seize company equipment and pretty much bust their business for a few weeks while they checked for valid licenses).

On top of the revenue losses, you also have companies investing a lot of money to avoid more revenue losses, which just drives up the cost of distribution. I work for a major enterprise software development company and we have an entire department dedicated to license tracking and monitoring. We also have several dedicated programmers just developing secure licensing methods.

I will say this though, in my personal life, I do have some pirated software on my PC. I would try to justify it by saying I rarely use my copy of office, but who am I kidding...it''s still pirated.

Say I only represent 3% of the total users with Office installed, that''s still 3% revenue loss based on units sold. And I think 3% is really, really, really low. That 3% can easily make or break a company''s profit margin.

R.