The software industry needs to stand up and be counted by supporting governments in a bid to stop piracy. Recent research from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) demonstrating the economic cost of piracy and calling on governments to act has been welcomed by UK-based digital security company BitArts Labs as providing concrete proof of the advantages of lowering piracy around the world.
However anti-piracy efforts cannot be left to government action alone - the software industry must do its part by making its products harder to crack and copy, the company says.
The BSA study, carried out by researcher IDC, covered 57 countries representing 98 per cent of the world's IT market. It found that reducing the piracy rate from its current 40 per cent to 30 per cent could add 1.5 million jobs, increase economic growth by $400 billion and generate $64 billion in new taxes around the world.
"Piracy is theft - and in current economic conditions it is robbing both individual software publishers and governments of much needed revenues as the BSA research shows," said Danny Chapchal, CEO, BitArts Labs. "While it is laudable to call for government action on this issue, software publishers have to play their part and adopt systematic, state-of-the art protection methodologies rather than just twiddling their thumbs. Governments can only do so much on their own - the industry must act to protect itself.
"Software is now everywhere - not just on PCs but increasingly on mobilemdevices such as Java phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). If piracy is not stopped at source then these emerging markets will suffer the same fate as the music industry, which has been crippled by widespread copying of its intellectual property," added John Safa, CTO, BitArts Labs.
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