Microsoft to continue anti-piracy lawsuits
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
After a string of court victories over copyright piracy, Microsoft Indonesia will move forward with a plan to file similar suits as part of a campaign to promote the use of original software here.
"We will do more of those (lawsuits). It's one of our grand strategies to prevent people from dealing with pirated software," Andrew McBean, president of Microsoft Indonesia, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based computer software giant Microsoft Corp., told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The other strategy includes approaching clients to use original software and educating people on the benefits, he added.
"What we want is for the (original) software industry in this country to flourish, more and more people make software, buy original software, as well as export it," McBean said.
But he was reluctant to provide details of the plan and the budget for the campaign.
Microsoft has won five legal battles this year against local vendors installing its software without license in computers sold to customers.
Such piracy is rampant in the country, ranging from operating systems to anti-virus software, mainly due to the extremely low price of pirated software products.
The average consumer in Indonesia can buy a pirated copy for about Rp 20,000 (US$1.9), while licensed software can cost hundreds of dollars per copy.
Former Microsoft Indonesia president Richard Kartawijaya predicted earlier this year that software piracy, which reached a staggering 85 percent of programs installed in all PCs in Indonesia in 2000, will return to the 92 percent level this year, the same level as 1999.
McBean said that Microsoft's victories in copyright piracy cases had helped establish legal certainty for investors amid many uncertainties in the country.
"I have received many responses, saying this is positive for investors. I think it's a good trigger for the whole software industry," he said.
However, McBean revealed that Microsoft wouldn't lower its software prices, saying the prices were set to cover billions of dollars of spending in research and development.
"We have always spent billions of dollars every year to make new or renewed software to satisfy customers, it won't be that easy to lower the prices of our software," he said.
Discounted software prices are introduced only for educational purposes and non-governmental organization usage, he said.
According to him, Microsoft clients in the country were dominated by corporate and small- to medium-sized enterprises rather than individual customers.
McBean said Microsoft Indonesia still ranked second lowest in Asia in terms of revenue, ahead of Vietnam, although Indonesia has the third largest population in the region.