BSA legal software promotion drive to be launched on April 17 | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

BSA legal software promotion drive to be launched on April 17

KARACHI (April 15 2008): The ‘Business Software Alliance, (BSA) has announced to launch legal software promotion drive across the country with a view to scale down 86 percent piracy rate through public awareness and incentives for installation of licensed software.

Addressing a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Monday, BSA spokesman for East Mediterranean and Pakistan Committee, Aly Harakeh, said that a 45-day nation-wide drive would be launched from Thursday, April 17.

He said that it would be aimed to acquaint the computer users, particularly the corporate sector, with the benefits of licensed software, besides the disadvantages of piracy. He added that increasing piracy had inflicted $143 million losses on Pakistan during 2006.

He said that BSA member companies would also give special discounts on purchase of licensed software up to June 1, 2008. BSA members are Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Cisco Systems, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Macromedia, McAfee, Microsoft, Solid Works, Sybase and Symantec.

Aly said he hoped that software piracy cut by 10 percent during the next four years could generate about 11,700 highly paid jobs, $160 million in economic growth and $23 million in tax revenues. He expressed fears that the global annual losses to software industry have now reached $40 billion.

He said that anti-piracy drive has become imperative to safeguard the IT industry from decline. He said the violation of copyright laws discourage the reputed international software companies to invest in Pakistan.

During the last few years software investment has gone to those countries where anti-piracy laws are strongly implemented, he added, urging upon companies to use licensed software to help promote domestic software industry.

The legal software not only provides full documentation including disks, instruction manuals and tutorials, but also qualifies for free or reduced-price upgrades through online registration. Elaborating the disadvantages of software piracy, he said the purchasers of stolen software face many unnecessary risks such as computer viruses, faulty software, inadequate documentation, lack of technical support and failure to download free upgrades available to the registered users.

Pakistan, he said, has already been late to avail the potential gains from the IT buoyancy, while the prevailing piracy is also discouraging the local development of packaged business software.

The country also pays the price of hosting piracy in the form of lost international contracts, he said, and added that the foreign software companies are reluctant to share their “source code” with any local company, if they suspect that their intellectual property will be pirated.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:4/15/2008