April 18, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 19, 1427

KARACHI, April 17: The Business Software Alliance (BSA) on Monday announced a 30-day grace period to help companies, organisations and individuals install licensed software without facing penalties for the past infringement of copyright law.

“The organizations and individuals that participate in the campaign and take necessary steps to become fully licensed will be excused from penalties for software violations occurring prior to April 20, 2006,” BSA Middle East co-chairman Al-Redha told a press conference here.

“This is a great opportunity for businesses and computer users to acquire software licences before they may become subject of BSA’s legal action,” he said and, adding that the grace period would end on May 20.

Al Redha said the businesses trying to determine whether their organisation is using unlicensed software could download free information from the website www.bsa.org or call the helpline (021) 4534396 or (021) 4537497 installed in Karachi.

Expressing the need for respecting intellectual property and copyright laws, he said software piracy could have a serious negative effect on the IT industry and ultimately dampen new software development, besides hurting the country’s economy.

The violation of piracy laws also discourages local and big international software companies to invest in Pakistan and kills numerous jobs and creativity, he said.

The protection of intellectual property rights in the country would help in creating an IT friendly atmosphere and attract more local and foreign investment in the software sector, Al Redha added.

Over the last few years, most of the software investment had gone to the countries where the anti-piracy laws were stronger, he pointed out.

“But, software piracy is a serious issue in Pakistan,” Al Redha said, adding that global software piracy figures depict that 82 per cent software used in the country is illegal.

He urged the corporate end-users, resellers and hard disk loaders not to use pirated software, which is detrimental to the computer users themselves, software producers and the national economy.

Al Redha said, in fact, software piracy had now become a global problem and needs to be addressed urgently. According to the BSA Annual Global Software Piracy Study, worldwide losses due to software piracy totalled $32 billion in the year 2004.

Established in 1989, the BSA was an industry alliance of software publishers who shared the common goal of eliminating software piracy worldwide, he said.

BSA members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Cisco Systems, Dell, Entrust, HP, IBM, Intel, Internet Security Systems, Macromedia, McAfee, Microsoft, Sybase, Symantec and Synopsys.—APP