Software piracy 'costing UK industry £1.5 billion a year'

chris

The Business Software Alliance, which represents the software industry, said that global piracy had cost companies around $53 billion (£35 billion) worldwide.

The research, carried out by IDC, questioned 6,000 companies worldwide, and looked at the software installed on Macs and PCs around the world during 2008. It found that instances of software piracy had raised by around one per cent in the UK in the last year, accounting for 27 per cent of programs loaded on to computers.

Global piracy rose from 38 per cent of software on business and home computers in 2007 to 41 per cent of software in 2008, driven largely by software piracy in emerging economies, such as China, Russia and Vietnam.

Marcel Warmerdam, an analyst with IDC, warned that the global economic crisis was likely to mean an even greater increase in software piracy this year.

He said that greater penetration of high-speed broadband connections was helping to fuel the downloading and use of illegal programs, especially from peer-to-peer networks: “Broadband is the dual carriageway used to download pirated software.”

The software industry has called on the government to address its concerns over intellectual property and piracy in Lord Carter’s forthcoming Digital Britain report, which sets out an agenda for the country’s hi-tech future.

“With more than one in four software installations categorised as illegal in the UK, we cannot afford to give up the fight against software piracy,” said Alyna Cope, a spokesperson for the British Software Alliance. “Much more needs to be done by the industry and the government to warn businesses and consumers of the risks associated with under-licensed software.

“Software piracy hurts our knowledge-based economy by weakening the very foundation on which it is built – respect for intellectual property and innovation.”


Source:telegraph