Software piracy in Asia hurts development: U.S.

Software piracy in Asia hurts development: U.S.

Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

Widespread software piracy in Asia is undermining the computer industry's efforts to develop better products, an executive of a U.S. company said on Thursday.

"Piracy in Asia is quite common, whether you look at Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand or Taiwan," said Eugene Bay, managing director for the Southeast Asian operations of U.S.- based software corporation Borland.

Bay said software piracy had caused companies to lose billions of dollars that could have been used to improve their products.

"A lot of the money that is generated from the sale and the licensing of software goes back into research and development to meet the business requirements of customers," Bay told reporters.

"If nobody buys legal software, where does the money come from to build better software?"

Borland is a member of the Business Software Alliance, a U.S.- based industry anti-counterfeiting group that is cooperating with the Malaysian government in cracking down on software piracy.

Malaysian authorities have warned companies to rid their computers of unlicensed software before September, when nationwide raids on offices will start.

The alliance estimates that 70 percent of new software used in Malaysia last year was illegal, up from 66 percent in 2000. The infringements resulted in losses totaling 359.1 million ringgit ($94.5 million) to the software industry.

The software piracy rate in the Asia-Pacific region rose to 54 percent last year, causing losses of about 4.7 billion ringgit ($1.2 billion), the group said. Vietnam, China and Indonesia were the Asian countries with the highest piracy rates.

Pirated software is commonly used in Malaysia despite strict copyright laws that allow offenders to be jailed for up to five years and fined 10,000 ringgit ($2,632) for each infringement.