Wednesday, June 25, 2008
'Use of unlicensed software rampant among SMEs, consumer side'
TWO out of three software installed on personal computers (PCs) in Brunei Darussalam last year were pirated, according to a study released yesterday aimed at pinning down the sultanate's piracy rate for the first time as part of a global piracy study.
The study, an extension of the fifth annual global PC software piracy study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) released earlier in May this year, valued industry losses due to software piracy at US$12 million ($16.4 million). The initial study covered 108 countries and was conducted independently by IDC, an IT global market research and forecasting firm.
The findings revealed that there are a large number of PCs owned by the top 10 employers in the sultanate, such as Brunei Shell Petroleum, the government (selected ministries, not all of them), Royal Brunei Airlines, and HSBC.
As the top 10 employers hire about 30 per cent of Brunei's total workforce, the bulk of the piracy problem lies within small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and consumers, said BSA (Asia) marketing director Roland Chan.
Brunei's piracy rate has been mitigated somewhat by the large number of PCs owned by the top 10 employers, and as these large enterprises have signed site licences with the software companies, this contributes to a large number of "legal" PCs in the overall Brunei market, thus moderating the overall piracy rate.
IDC's research indicates that on the SMEs and consumer side, there has been little or almost no compliance with intellectual property (IP) rights, and usage of unlicensed software is rampant. Recent anonymous queries at the shops selling PCs to consumers and SMEs turn up offers to sell PCs complete with a full hard disk of the more popular software programs that are pre-installed and "cracked".
Fighting software piracy in Brunei can only be achieved through a joint effort between the industry and the government to promote awareness building programs as well as enforcement, said Chan.
"Software piracy is tantamount to software theft, and therefore forbidden by the law of Brunei. The downside of using pirated and unlicensed software are vast — from lower productivity, to security concerns, to legal risks," he said.
"Clearly much could be done by the government of Brunei to enforce IP rights if Brunei wants to stand head and shoulders with the developed countries and if it wishes to develop a thriving domestic IT industry. Having the proper legislation and resources in the customs and police to address piracy is a good start but a more effective strategy is for the authorities to proactively clamp down on piracy instead of waiting for the IP owners to lodge a formal complaint or request," the study stated.
A seminar on 'Business Optimisation with Good Governance and Staying Compliant with Software Asset Management' was conducted by the BSA in cooperation with the Attorney General's Chambers, Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry, Ministry of Communications, Royal Brunei Police Force and the Brunei Darussalam International Chambers of Commerce and Industry yesterday at the Empire Hotel and Country Club.
The Brunei Times
TWO out of three software installed on personal computers (PCs) in Brunei Darussalam last year were pirated, according to a study released yesterday aimed at pinning down the sultanate's piracy rate for the first time as part of a global piracy study.
The study, an extension of the fifth annual global PC software piracy study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) released earlier in May this year, valued industry losses due to software piracy at US$12 million ($16.4 million). The initial study covered 108 countries and was conducted independently by IDC, an IT global market research and forecasting firm.
The findings revealed that there are a large number of PCs owned by the top 10 employers in the sultanate, such as Brunei Shell Petroleum, the government (selected ministries, not all of them), Royal Brunei Airlines, and HSBC.
As the top 10 employers hire about 30 per cent of Brunei's total workforce, the bulk of the piracy problem lies within small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and consumers, said BSA (Asia) marketing director Roland Chan.
Brunei's piracy rate has been mitigated somewhat by the large number of PCs owned by the top 10 employers, and as these large enterprises have signed site licences with the software companies, this contributes to a large number of "legal" PCs in the overall Brunei market, thus moderating the overall piracy rate.
IDC's research indicates that on the SMEs and consumer side, there has been little or almost no compliance with intellectual property (IP) rights, and usage of unlicensed software is rampant. Recent anonymous queries at the shops selling PCs to consumers and SMEs turn up offers to sell PCs complete with a full hard disk of the more popular software programs that are pre-installed and "cracked".
Fighting software piracy in Brunei can only be achieved through a joint effort between the industry and the government to promote awareness building programs as well as enforcement, said Chan.
"Software piracy is tantamount to software theft, and therefore forbidden by the law of Brunei. The downside of using pirated and unlicensed software are vast — from lower productivity, to security concerns, to legal risks," he said.
"Clearly much could be done by the government of Brunei to enforce IP rights if Brunei wants to stand head and shoulders with the developed countries and if it wishes to develop a thriving domestic IT industry. Having the proper legislation and resources in the customs and police to address piracy is a good start but a more effective strategy is for the authorities to proactively clamp down on piracy instead of waiting for the IP owners to lodge a formal complaint or request," the study stated.
A seminar on 'Business Optimisation with Good Governance and Staying Compliant with Software Asset Management' was conducted by the BSA in cooperation with the Attorney General's Chambers, Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry, Ministry of Communications, Royal Brunei Police Force and the Brunei Darussalam International Chambers of Commerce and Industry yesterday at the Empire Hotel and Country Club.
The Brunei Times