Autodesk: Piracy in India Costs Us &#36;367M
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American design software developer Autodesk Inc. said Tuesday it is losing &#36;367 million in potential revenues each year because of software piracy in India.
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Sales of the open source operating system Linux will reach $35 billion by 2008, according to analysts at IDC, with $10 billion of that accounted for in desktops.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. judge on Friday sentenced the owner and operator of iBackups.net to 87 months in prison, the longest sentence ever given for software piracy, according to a software trade group. Nathan Peterson, of Antelope Acres, California, also forfeited nearly all of his assets to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, and he agreed to pay more than US$5.4 million in restitution, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) said. Peterson pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal copyright infringement in December. At that time, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) called Backups.net "the largest for-profit software piracy site ever shut down by law enforcement." The Web site illegally sold software that would have been worth $20 million on the retail market, the DOJ said. Peterson will begin paying off the remaining $5 million in damages 60 days after his release from prison, at a rate of $200 per month. In criminal piracy cases, the average damages resulting from pirated software are just over $9 million, or less than half of the $20 million caused by iBackups, SIIA said. The $5.4 million Peterson agreed to pay in restitution is eight times the average fine of $659,000, according to a SIIA study tracking U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation cases on software piracy reported since 2000. Peterson's site used Google.com text ads to find customers, SIIA said. Buyers should be aware of the possibility that software being sold through text ads might not be legal, the trade group said. Neither the prosecutor nor Peterson's attorney immediately returned calls seeking comment.
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Indian outsourcers already have a large share of outsourced application development and maintenance and are dominant in business process outsourcing. The country is now targeting a larger share of the market for remote infrastructure management services (IMS), and is planning to more than double revenue from these services to $15 billion by 2013.IMS involves managing an enterprise&#8217;s core IT systems, including hardware, software, connectivity and people. The IMS industry is moving towards a remote delivery model where services are increasing delivered from low-cost locations by service providers and wholly-owned services subsidiaries of user companies, according to a report released Thursday by India&#8217;s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).Customers in the US and Europe are increasingly willing to outsource IMS to offshore locations, because the data does not move out of the home countries, and is only managed remotely, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at sourcing consultancy firm,Technology Partners International (TPI) in Houston, Texas.In India, IMS business is going both to Indian outsourcers, and the Indian operations of large IT services companies, Pai said. Because of the large staff component involved in IMS, there are cost benefits in outsourcing IMS to low-cost, offshore locations like India, he added.Research done by management consultancy firm McKinsey for Nasscom, suggests that the IMS business could generate between 325,000 to 375,000 jobs in India by 2013, as 70 to 75 percent of the roles in IMS can be moved offshore.Low-cost locations, including India, have so far captured a mere $6 to 7 billion&#160;of the IMS opportunity.Indian outsourcers have so far learned to price their services on the basis of staff time utilized. They now have to learn more sophisticated pricing that takes into account other parameters like amount of computing power being managed, if they are not to risk losing money in the business, Pai said.
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(InfoWorld) - Earlier this month the Business Software Alliance (BSA) upped the ante from $200,000 to $1 million for anyone who turns in a company that is illegally circumventing software licensing agreements. BSA members include a who's who of the software and hardware industry, including Apple, Adobe, Dell, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and dozens more. The bounty for uncovering cheaters is not just a marketing ploy. The Association can, in fact, put some bite into uncovering cheaters, according to Kris Barker, CEO of Express Metrix. Express Metrix is a company that does hardware and software auditing to help companies keep in compliance with their software licenses. "Most software licensing agreements include a provision that allows a software vendor or its agent, which can be the BSA, to do an audit of end-user agreements," said Barker. The BSA increased the reward as software piracy continues to grow. According to IDC, U.S. software vendors lost $7.3 billion in 2006 as a result of piracy. However, turning in the man or woman in the cubicle next to you is not how an informer can earn the top reward. The BSA has 22 terms and conditions that must be met before the $1 million payoff is awarded. The rewards are based on sums received in out-of-court settlements, which is the most common way a company avoids any more punitive prosecution for piracy. In order to earn the $1 million, a company would have to settle out of court with the BSA for anywhere between $10,000,001 to $15,000,000. The terms and conditions also state, that "no reward is payable unless the BSA pursues a case and, as a direct result of the information provided by you, receives a monetary payment from the reported organization." A far more modest reward, up to $5,000, is given to anyone whose information leads to a settlement of $15,000 to $100,000. Despite many restrictions, BSA says that since 2005, out-of-court settlements have totaled $22 million. Another requirement of the terms and conditions states that an employee who has installed unlicensed software is not eligible for a reward unless "you were directed by your supervisor to do so." The rewards are part of a larger BSA campaign, which is appropriately titled, "Blow the Whistle."
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San Francisco (dpa) - Microsoft is working toward a bare-bones personal computer that would cost less than 100 dollars and could help stem rampant software piracy in emerging countries, CEO Steve Ballmer said Wednesday, according to tech news service ZDNet
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REYNOSA, Mexico  - Ecuadorean computer technician Agustina Herrera paid people smugglers $14,000 to slip into the United States illegally two years ago, swimming the Rio Grande, tramping through swamps and nearly dying from snake bites.
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(InfoWorld) - The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has temporarily raised the reward that's part of controversial program encouraging people to report software piracy from $200,000 to $1 million, the trade group announced Monday. The BSA, representing large software vendors such as Microsoft, Apple, and IBM, will pay the sum for accurate reports of software copyright infringement between now and Oct. 2, the trade group said. There are some restrictions on the reward payments. The BSA has also launched a national radio and Internet advertising campaign titled, "blow the whistle." The trade group will also target several states, including California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida over the next year. Since the BSA launched its Rewards program in the U.S. in late 2005, it has reached settlements with hundreds of companies, bringing in nearly $22 million. The retail value of software pirated in the U.S. during 2006 was $7.3 billion, according to a study from IDC. The new reward shows BSA's commitment to fighting software piracy, the trade group said. "Businesses often have a million excuses for having unlicensed software on office computers," Jenny Blank, BSA's director of enforcement, said in a statement. "BSA is now offering up to a million dollars for employees who turn them in." Businesses caught with unlicensed software can pay up to $150,000 per violation. Critics of the program say it encourages disgruntled former employees to snitch on companies. "In recent years the relationship between software publishers and businesses has become increasingly acrimonious," says a paper cowritten by Robert Scott, a partner in Scott & Scott, a law form specializing in defending BSA cases. "Software publishers are frequently approaching their customers making allegations that include violations of federal copyright laws and breach of software license contracts."
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Days after a beaming Bill Gates  unveiled his much-vaunted Windows Vista software at a retail  price of $400 for the premium version, Latin American street  vendors are hawking pirate copies for under $10.
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WASHINGTON The United States is cracking down on the growing trade in counterfeit and pirated goods that costs American businesses hundreds of billions of dollar annually, US government and industry officials said Monday.
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25 arrested Pirated Microsoft software, estimated by the firm to be worth more than $2bn, has been seized by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Chinese police following a long-running joint operation which began in 2005.â¦
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Prosecutors have charged 11 people in California, Texas and Washington state with conspiring to distribute more than &#36;30 million of counterfeit computer software and products.
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How your computer could be costing you thousands of dollars.
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That&#39;s right. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has become the latest victim of piracy, with illegal copies of the game, its manual, and its cover appearing on various Web sites.
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Should prices for blank media and recording products include a royalty fee to copyright holders for presumed losses to piracy?
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(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs business providing software and services to companies outside its borders will grow a healthy 26 to 29 percent this year, the country's main trade association for that sector said Monday. Revenue from exports of software, services and business process outsourcing (BPO) will reach about $40 billion for the fiscal year that ends next March 31, according to data released Monday by the National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM). Export revenue from these sectorsÂ grew 33 percent to $31.3 billionÂ in the fiscal year to March 31,Â according to data released by the trade body. The strong growth in software and services exports is coming from an improvement in India's competitiveness, and the addition of new services, such as remote infrastructure management, by Indian service providers, Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM told reporters in Bangalore on Monday. The revenue figure also includes exports to their parent companies and clients by Indian subsidiaries of multinational companies such as IBM, Oracle, and Accenture, that are expanding fast in India. Indiaâs overall IT industry grew by 30.7 percent in the year to March 31 to earn revenue of $39.6 billion, with the domestic market also growing by 22 percent to $8.2 billion, NASSCOM said. Many multinational companies including Hewlett-Packard and IBM have bagged outsourcing contracts from Indian companies. The Indian IT industry employed about 1.6 million staff as of March 31, besides about 6 million indirect staff employed in supporting the large offshore software development and BPO operations in India, Karnik said. About 1.2 million people are employed in developing software and running back office processes and call centers for customers abroad. The U.S. continues to be the largest market for Indian exports, accounting for 66 percent of revenue, Karnik said. Indiaâs IT industry is facing high staff attrition and salary increases, but that will not slow down growth, Karnik said. In the short term, NASSCOM, of Delhi, is helping set up finishing schools that will make more Indian graduates employable by the IT and the BPO industry, he said. In the long-term, though, NASSCOM is counting on more investments by government and industry in the education sector, he added. The IT industry in India is also grappling with the strengthening of the Indian Rupee against the US dollar, which pushes down realization in Rupees of revenue earned abroad by Indian companies. In the year to March 31, exports of IT services grew by 35.5 percent to $18 billion, while exports of BPO services grew 33.5 percent to $8.4 billion. Revenue from exports of engineering services, a classification that deals with non-electronic design services, grew by 23 percent to $4.9 billion.
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This week we have seen numerous reports (a href=&quot;http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=352&quot;&gt;see here) in the trade press referring to Gartner UK analyst Annette Jump claiming that pre-installing Linux on PCs encourages piracy of Windows.