The Hindu Business Line : `The fight matters'

California Man Sentenced to Over 7 Years in Prison for Software Piracy' is the link that screams at you when you browse through the US' section of Business Software Alliance's Web site.

In contrast, the Indian section's top news item is about a Delhi-based company that has been raided for software piracy.

The gap between a crime and punishment probably explains why the US has only 21 per cent software piracy compared to India's 72 per cent.

Robert Holleyman, president and CEO, BSA, for whom extinguishing software piracy is top of the agenda, was on an India visit recently. Excerpts from a chat he had with eWorld:

BSA is well known for its work against software piracy. But, as CEO of the organisation, what is the objective of your India visit?

We work on three things: Indian software services companies are at the forefront of technology. We engage with them. We also have BSA members I would be meeting, as I would with partners in the government and Nasscom, the industry body.

Why software services companies in India? They are into services and pirating of `protected' software isn't an issue with them.

Many top Indian software services companies do have products whose intellectual property rests with these companies. Moreover they are not yet focusing on the Indian market. It is such an opportunity. Also, several Indian employees in the West would like to come back here as entrepreneurs. If India as a market for (legally-purchased) software opened up, there would be many more start-ups.

In a recent report, BSA has stated that India has seen a 2 percentage point drop in piracy from 74 per cent to 72 per cent. Are you happy with the progress?

Any slump in piracy is noteworthy. We have strong local partners such as Nasscom.

Piracy in India is neither as high as China (86 per cent) nor as low as the US (21 per cent). What is it that you do differently in these regions to stem piracy?

There is no magic here. In the US, enforcement of the law and quick convictions in the courts act as great deterrents. Even a threat of a lawsuit is enough to make people switch to legal software there. A `guilty' verdict could mean a fine of upto $250,000 per pirated programme.

So, if it is a given that convictions will not take place quickly, what is it that you and Nasscom can together do?

I am not giving up so easily on that front. (smiles). In countries such as Thailand, there are specialised intellectual property (IP) courts. That becomes the fast track. In India too, several State Governments are open to this idea.

Indian product companies feel that the ease of access to legal software and not price, is the deterrent to legal software. One company actually cut prices by two-thirds but expects to see no substantial difference in piracy rates. It feels that distribution channels are the key. Your experience... ?

Yes. There is no correlation between falling prices and falling piracy rates. In cases where we have caught companies using pirated software, it's not that we found pirated copies for expensive software and legal copies of inexpensive, utilities software.

In many instances, the CEO of an organisation using pirated software does want to switch to legal software. It's only that it is not top priority but at No. 20 on a list of `to-do' things. We encourage them to do it today rather than put it off. For policy reasons, though, we cannot advise our clients on actual pricing.

When you identify and caution companies, using pirated software, do they switch to open source since it is free to download and use?

We don't find users doing that. If they genuinely want to use legal software, they do end up switching to legal copies. It's not as if open source is free. It's not only the question of free acquisition of software but total cost of use. And to us, we are fine as long as they do not use pirated software, open source or otherwise.

What impact would falling piracy levels in India mean?

It could mean that more money could come into the economy. When you use pirated software, the US-based vendor alone does not lose out on revenue but so does the Indian distributor.

Specifically, a 10 percentage point drop in piracy could mean an additional (about) 1,16,000 jobs, a nearly $6 billion contribution to India's GDP, a $386 million rise in taxes and about $8.2 billion in revenues to vendors, according to the BSA-IDC Economic Impact Report of December 2005. That is the impact we are looking at!

bharatk@thehindu.co.in

More Stories on : Interview | Piracy | Software

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Hi-tech hiccup

A health link

Remix remixed

Return of the natives

"Delayed Write Failed" error

`The fight matters'

Made to order

The Spotlight is on security

Broadband on narrow wicket

Quiz

The CTO can be a `horizon filter'

Cartoon