Astell Infotech caught using pirated software

NEW DELHI: In its bid to keep a tab on unauthorized usage of software, Delhi Police raided Astell Infotech Ltd, the Indian arm of a New Jersey-based IT services firm. The company has been charged with using unauthorized software.

The economic offences wing of the Delhi Police swung into action and conducted a raid at the Greater Kailash office of Astell on September 3 after another software firm Macromedia Inc. complained of unauthorized usage of its software.

"We raided Astell's office located in Greater Kailash. The company had been using 40 computers that were checked by the authorized representative of Macromedia for software piracy. Around 15 PCs have been seized as of now," said a senior Delhi Police official.

"During the course of the raid, it was found that the hard discs of 15 computers were loaded with software of Macromedia. Astell had no authorization for using the software," informed Macromedia India country manager Shriram Krishnamachari, adding the estimated value of the recovered software was Rs 5,00,000.

The official said that a case under copyright laws has been registered against Astell Infotech. "The investigation is in progress. While top official of the country are not in India, we are trying to gather information from local employees over here," he added.

Interestingly, Astell Infotech officials refused to comment on the issue and simply said that 'they don't have any idea about such a raid'. The company has offices in New Jersey and New Delhi and provides services to large multinational clients in the US.

"We had multiple round of meetings with Astell's India operations, but they were never serious about having licensed version. This is a result of their carelessness towards having a licensed policy in place. No company should place their hard fought business reputation at risk by using unlicensed software," said Krishnamachari.

"Companies, which use illegal software for their own benefit, are robbing the software developers of their valuable intellectual property and placing the future viability of software industry at risk," he said.

This is just a part of the iceberg as far as macromedia's anti piracy efforts are concerned. The company is closely working with Police departments of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore in identifying and punishing different software companies using pirated version of software products.

In a similar move about three months back, the company conducted a raid on a Bangalore based company and seized more than 20 PCs containing pirated software. "We have done in the past and will continue to help the police in punishing the pirates of software," Shriram added.

It is not just the punishment that the company is involved in, but is also engaged in increasing the awareness and educating the software community about various licensing models and its benefits at various levels within the country.

"We are a part of Business Software Alliance (BSA) and conduct different seminars and functions to educate CEOs and CIOs about software piracy. I feel that there are not many companies in India, which have asset management software. Such software helps the CIOs to keep track of different software loaded in different machines within an organization. So we want to educate them about having an environment where the industry as a whole can grow and achieve its objectives," he informed.

(CNS)