Piracy can deflect foreign investments in India

CHENNAI: India is today seen as a major IT destination. But simultaneously India ranks 23rd among the 25 countries having the highest rate of software piracy worldwide. According to IDC estimates, the money lost in 2001 from pirated software is estimated to be close to $ 245 million, which is almost half of the legal packaged software market.

This revenue loss was mainly due to piracy by unauthorized copying and selling and unauthorized bundling with hardware. With the software piracy increasing at an alarming rate in India, chances of investors being dissuaded from investing in India are high.

Software piracy, which is the copying, distribution or downloading of unauthorized copies of software is a phenomenon observed worldwide. Business Software Alliance (BSA), a group of software manufacturers dedicated to promoting a safe and legal online world, reported that in 2001, piracy cost the worldwide software industry $10.97 billion loss in revenue. In the year 2000 US lost not only $2.6 billion in revenue, but also 118,000 jobs, $5.6 billion in lost wages and $ 1.5 billion in lost tax revenue.

Recently Autodesk Inc., founding member of the BSA and a design software and digital content company launched a Zero Tolerance program to eradicate use of pirated versions of Autodesk software. The company serves a diverse portfolio of markets, including building design, geographic information systems, manufacturing, digital media, and wireless data services.

Over the last nine months, Autodesk has been sending "Cease and Desist" warning letters to suspected illegal users, persuading them to legalize. Said Andre Pravaz, Regional Director South Asia Pacific, "Zero Tolerance is a policy taken by our company to wipe out piracy of our software in the country. We embarked in this program a few months ago after receiving numerous information against companies using pirated versions of our software.

Part of this program is also to warn companies by issuing out lawyer's letters giving them an opportunity to become legal users before we take further legal actions. We have issued more than 500 companies these warning letters so that they have an opportunity to comply with the law rather than letting the law catch up on them." In India itself the company has conducted six raids till date.

The companies they have raided are - a large civil, structural and engineering consultancy company having offices across India; a training center, CAD/GIS Solutions in Hyderabad, Zee Interactive Learning Systems Ltd. in Mumbai and Delhi (training centers), etc.

Software developers would also be discouraged to create a new innovation if there is no respect for IPR since they would be shunted from exploiting their economic rights to benefit from their creation. In a move to curb the installation of pirated software on PCs, Microsoft had launched the Dealer Test Purchase Program (DTPP) in 1997 to penalize software piracy activity and to support vendors selling licensed software.

For a customer not to be gulled by a pirated copy of software, he should make sure that he is buying the software from an authorized reseller or directly from the manufacturer itself. Still further legal software that is supplied with a license would have an original media (CDs or diskettes) with user instructions.