'Software piracy benefits only criminals'

Software piracy is a grave issue and has alarming impacts across the world, including India. But for the problem of such a magnitude, the solution lies in joint efforts. Business Software Alliance (BSA), the non-profit trade organization, is working with several industry bodies, local and international governments globally, to spread the awareness and educate people as well as industries against illegal software usage and its adverse impacts — both legally and business-wise.

Keshav Dhakad, BSA chairman — India Committee, in conversation with Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News, talks about India’s good performance in bringing down software piracy rate, the reasons behind the fall in piracy rate and much more. Excerpts:

The recent global software piracy report stated that the PC software piracy in India is down by 3 per cent in 2009, at 65 per cent, while the piracy rate has gone up from 41 to 43 per cent. What are the key reasons for such a shift in the software piracy rates?

Piracy rates in India have been on a gradual decline since the last six years; in 2003 it was 74 per cent. In 2009, India made a significant progress in further bringing down the piracy rates as compared to 2008. However, our annual commercial value of unlicensed software still stands at a whopping US$ 2.03 billion, which is very alarming.

India needs to continue to work towards concrete educational, legislative and administrative initiatives at a pan-India level to effectively lower software piracy year on year, which would help the domestic IT industry grow faster, develop cutting-edge IT products, create more jobs and add to tax revenues and overall GDP growth.

Globally, the factors driving piracy rates up included rapid growth of the emerging consumer PC markets like India, Brazil and China and a greater activity in the installed base of computers older than 2009 where unlicensed software is more prevalent.

In 2009, those three markets together accounted for 86 per cent of PC shipments growth. Due to the rapid rise in these countries’ PC markets, the overall average piracy rate rose up globally. Additionally, the increasing sophistication of software pirates and cyber criminals, especially those using the Internet to supply illegal software, also caused an increase in the availability of pirated/illegal software.

Forces driving piracy down include vendor legalization programs, government and industry education campaigns, enforcement actions, and technology shifts, such as the increased deployment of digital rights management (DRM) and greater use of ISO 19770:1 standard software asset management (SAM) to address under-licensing issues in the work place.

In India, BSA, in 2009, successfully partnered with the Karnataka Government to deliver SAM training and assessment to about 65 companies in the IT/ITeS space. This also involved distribution of educational material on SAM to more than 700 small and medium enterprise - IT and ITeS companies.

With its objective to improve IT governance in India, BSA partnered with FICCI Western Region Council and Maharashtra Government under the Progressive Maharashtra Campaign, to launch its second state SAM education and certification program targeting companies across the sectors in helping them get trained and assessed on SAM. This project is currently underway.

This apart, there were several awareness programs run by industry bodies such as FICCI and CII along with the government to encourage the importance of IP in software for enhanced business growth. The government is taking further steps such as formulating a national IP policy, seeking public comments and suggestions under which a national anti-piracy task force is proposed to be constituted.

What are the factors, according to you, cause for the spread of software piracy?

Piracy benefits no one. Piracy causes serious harm and risk to everyone, from users to manufacturers to governments. While users, including individuals, corporate and governments, face a serious threat to their PC security and ensuing mitigating costs, manufacturers lose their valuable R&D investments and government misses the opportunities to collect legitimate taxes from genuine sales, adding to jobs in the industry and overall economic growth.

The menace and crime of piracy only benefits criminal syndicates, anti-social elements and cyber criminals, who are able to generate illegal money through piracy.

The key factors which drive software piracy are:

1. General lack of awareness and education of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the public at large.

2. Lack of understanding and respect for IPRs, specifically in software.

3. Software piracy is not seen as a serious crime or civil wrong and has no social stigma attached to it.

4. Lack of awareness around the threats and risks from using pirated software.

5. Companies and organizations lacking robust IT Policy and procurement environment to procure, deploy, use, manage, monitor and retire software licenses as assets.

6. Due to a lack of a structured enforcement environment led by the government under a National Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force, which currently doesn’t exist in India.

7. Increase in PC shipments not commensurate to the sale of genuine software.

Has the Internet helped or is it helping in some ways in the spread of software piracy? Do you think, the software piracy will be under full control in years to come and there will be an end to the illegal industry?

This study does not distinguish between online and offline software piracy. However, we do know the Internet is a factor in increasing software theft. The growth of fast broadband and P2P networking, especially in emerging markets, has made it easier to pirate software. In 2009, BSA sent 7.3 million takedown notices to Internet service providers (ISPs) worldwide to address websites and file-sharers that were distributing pirated software products.

Unknown to people in general, usage of pirated software increases serious threats and risks of cyber crime and computer security. With the explosion of Internet usage and almost every desktop or laptop connected with Internet, cyber crimes have increased dramatically and one of the many lapses which cyber criminals look at is the vulnerability of non-genuine computer software.

For example, the recent global spread of the Conficker virus has been attributed in part to the lack of automatic security updates for unlicensed software. In a 2006 study, IDC found that 29 per cent of Web sites and 61 percent of peer-to-peer sites offering pirated software tried to infect test computers with Trojans, spywares, key-loggers, and other tools of identity theft.