Software piracy in India down by a notch

Global software makers lost an estimated $2.76 billion to illegal software trade in India, a study today said.

According to a BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study, even as piracy in the country has seen a one point drop to 68 per cent in 2008, it has resulted in loss of billions of dollars for software majors like Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft globally.

"With the various initiatives taken by the government and the firms, piracy has gone down to 68 per cent and in the coming year also, we expect this to continue as people become more informed about licenced software," BSA Vice-President and Regional Director (Asia-Pacific) Jeffrey J Hardee told reporters afetr releasing the study.

The dollar-rupee fluctuation resulted in the increase in value terms.

Hardee also said the rapidly growing user base for assembled PC units and easy availability of pirated software on the Internet, is a major concern.

However "with software firms offering services to the SMBs and more portable PCs being shipped, piracy should come down", he added.

The study noted a rise in piracy levels globally. While it has gone up to 41 per cent globally from 38 per cent last year, piracy also remains high in the Central and Eastern Europe (66 per cent), Latin America (65 per cent) and Asia-Pacific (61 per cent).

"Worldwide losses due to piracy grew by 11 per cent to $53 billion in non-adjusted dollars, although half of that growth was the result of the falling US dollar. Excluding the effect of exchange rates, losses grew by 5 per cent to $50.2 billion," the study said.

A IDC study done in 2008 had predicted that lowering PC software piracy in India by 10 points over four years could generate an additional 43,000 new jobs, $200 million in tax revenues and an additional $2.7 billion in revenues to local vendors.

Asked about the impact of global slowdown on piracy, IDC Vice-President (Asia Pacific-Consulting Operations) Victor Lim said, "It is difficult to say anything but as the adoption of netbooks, which generally come with legitimate pre-loaded software and software companies also offering services to smaller businesses, piracy levels should come down."

According to the study, the US, Japan, New Zealand, and Luxembourg have the lowest levels of piracy of about 20 per cent, while the highest-piracy countries are Armenia, Georgia, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe at over 90 per cent.