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Software piracy rate dips as firms heed warnings
London, June 04: Corporations cracked down on pirated software last year, trimming the glut by a percentage point, an industry report said on Tuesday.
London, June 04: Corporations cracked down on pirated software last year, trimming the glut by a percentage point, an industry report said on Tuesday.
The rare bit of good news comes at a tough time for software and media conglomerates. They are battling to stem the black market trade of cut-rate or free software, music and movie copies available online and on the street.
Industry lobby group Business Software Alliance (BSA) said the worldwide software piracy rate fell last year to 39 percent from 40 percent.
"We`re pleased with the results, but we`re still facing a piracy situation where nearly four in ten pieces of business software is used without authorization," said Beth Scott, BSA vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The BSA has spent huge sums to try to reduce the installing of unlicensed software duplicates in areas such as word processing and spreadsheet programs to avoid paying the license fees.
The modest improvement brings to an end two straight years of piracy escalation. The industry had blamed the burgeoning traffic in copyright-protected materials on Internet file-sharing networks and on so-called "warez" trading sites for the recent upsurge in unlicensed software duplicates.
The 2002 figure is 10 percentage points below the 1994 level, the point at which the industry first confronted the problem in a united front, suggesting the group`s anti-piracy lobbying and education initiatives are showing results.
Bureau Report
The rare bit of good news comes at a tough time for software and media conglomerates. They are battling to stem the black market trade of cut-rate or free software, music and movie copies available online and on the street.
Industry lobby group Business Software Alliance (BSA) said the worldwide software piracy rate fell last year to 39 percent from 40 percent.
"We`re pleased with the results, but we`re still facing a piracy situation where nearly four in ten pieces of business software is used without authorization," said Beth Scott, BSA vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The BSA has spent huge sums to try to reduce the installing of unlicensed software duplicates in areas such as word processing and spreadsheet programs to avoid paying the license fees.
The modest improvement brings to an end two straight years of piracy escalation. The industry had blamed the burgeoning traffic in copyright-protected materials on Internet file-sharing networks and on so-called "warez" trading sites for the recent upsurge in unlicensed software duplicates.
The 2002 figure is 10 percentage points below the 1994 level, the point at which the industry first confronted the problem in a united front, suggesting the group`s anti-piracy lobbying and education initiatives are showing results.
Bureau Report