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Worldwide survey: 36% of software pirated
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-08 21:36
O&O Software, with only 28 employees, has built a $3 million-a-year
business developing award-winning utilities for personal computers.
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different with these Office alternatives.
How much bigger it might be without the plague of software piracy is
impossible to say, but it's clear sales are being lost.
"We even have customers who try to register" pirated copies, spokesman Frank
Alperstaedt said. "Sometimes they know they're illegal, sometimes not."
Sellers pause to
eat near a display of pirated DVDs outside the Brasilia's hugely popular
'Paraguay market' where shoppers can pick up contraband goods ranging from
CDs and DVDs to whisky duty-free prices, in Brasilia, July 2, 2004.
[Reuters] | Berlin-based O&O Software is one
of dozens of global high-tech companies, including giants like Microsoft Corp.,
IBM Corp. and Apple Computer Inc., renewing a fight against piracy by
highlighting costs to government and society alongside their own losses.
An industry study, released Wednesday, said more than a third of computer
software installed worldwide last year was counterfeit or pirated, which it said
cost software companies $29 billion.
The piracy rate was lowest — 23 percent — in North America, where losses were
more than $7.2 billion. That was about the same as in the Asia-Pacific region,
$7.6 billion, although the piracy rate there was higher at 53 percent,
reflecting smaller sales.
Piracy was most expensive in the European Union, where a 37 percent rate cost
software publishers nearly $10 billion, according to the survey conducted by the
U.S.-based market research firm IDC for the Business Software Alliance.
A vendor sells pirated DVDs to a
customer at a restaurant in Beijing May 15, 2004. Hollywood films rule
China's pirated DVD market, where piracy makes the latest blockbusters
available for about a dollar.
[Reuters] |
Year-on-year comparisons were
unavailable because the Washington-based industry alliance broadened its 2003
survey to include software on servers and personal computers. Earlier surveys
looked only at business software.
IDC compared software sales in 86 countries with estimates of software in use
and took the difference to be the pirated amount, calculating losses based on
prices for those copies.
Critics say such figures are exaggerated because those with pirated copies
might not have actually gone out and paid full price for the software. They also
argue that users can get hooked enough on an illegal copy to later buy upgrades
they might never have otherwise.
But the Business Software Alliance says its survey was conducted
independently using scientifically based methods.
Indifferent to
threats of penalties on the country's exports, thousands of stores across
Pakistan are packed with pirated cinema and music releases as well as
popular computer programs. [AFP] | In addition,
the biggest form of piracy occurs when a company with 200 desktops, for example,
buys licenses to install software legally on only 10 of them. "Clearly that's
lost opportunity there," BSA spokeswoman Diane Smiroldo said.
While software piracy is not new, industry groups say it is worsening because
of faster Internet distribution, inadequate legislation and lax enforcement.
The Business Software Alliance said a 10 percent reduction in software piracy
across Europe could bring more than 250,000 new jobs and $23 billion in tax
revenues by 2006.
Dominique Pouliquen, chief executive of the French 3D graphics developer
Realviz, said reduced piracy would generate additional funds for research and
development.
The industry's Asian unit was sending 3,000 letters of complaint to Internet
service providers whose equipment it accuses of enabling file-swapping services.
The alliance plans to continue lobbying governments and educating consumers,
but will consider legal action, said Jeffrey Hardee, the alliance's Asian
regional director.
"We think that enforcement is an important part of our work," Hardee said.
"But ultimately we are trying to change people's opinions, and we don't only
want to be known for enforcement."
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