Tags:
Journalism of Courage
PUNE, Nov 29: DTP-users of popular Indian language software packages, beware! You may not be aware that by paying relatively smaller amounts for similar looking copies, you end up buying the pirated versions.
The city-based Modular Systems, one of the pioneers in Indian multilingual software developers who discovered that their popular package of Shree-Lipi (version 1) was being pirated to a large extent. The company conducted raids on a massive scale in the city with the assistance of the local police. Four arrests have been made so far. The raids led by DCP Ramrao Pawar with a team of six police personnel were conducted in Hadapsar, Pimpri-Chinchwad and the city areas resulting in the seizure of equipment worth Rs 2 lakh.
Those arrested include 39-year-old Rajendra Ramgaria of Hadapsar who runs a DTP business, 29-year-old Sanjay Aurora and Vineet Sud from Pimpri and Vivek Choudhari who was also a reseller of the pirated versions.
The Copyright Act 1957 as amended in 1994 prohibits infringement of intellectual property rights of software developers. Sec 63 (B) stipulates minimum imprisonment of seven days and a fine of Rs 50,000 extendable to three months and Rs 2 lakh.
Col B.F. Chaudhari, chief executive, antipiracy operations of the company revealed that the company suffers annual losses to the tune of Rs 30 lakh since some of their popular packages have been pirated to a large extent. Significantly, the pirated versions find major buyers in places such as Hyderabad, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Sangli.
The company has formed an anti-piracy cell, the only one of its kind in the country to tackle the serious problem which is gaining cancerous proportions and is yet to gain momentum since a majority of companies believe that this problem should primarily be tackled by the National Association of Software Companies (NASSCOM). NASSCOM has pegged the Indian software industry at Rs 12,000 crore in the year 1998. The 50 per cent growth rate in the industry over the last two years however, has also witnessed a stupendous increase in software piracy touching a figure of 80 per cent.
According to Col Choudhary, software piracy on a world-wide level has cost the computer industry a loss of US $ 11.4 billion in its turnover. In India, the losses due to piracy have been estimated at Rs 865 crore in the year 1997 of which American companies were the major sufferers. Companies such as Microsoft, Novell and Adobe have suffered losses to the tune of Rs 600 crore for this period.
Modular Systems and their marketing partner Cirrus Electronic Systems, however, who conducted raids in about 50 outlets in various parts of the country in the last one and half years discovered that that besides the end users of DTP, six resellers including an electronics engineer and engineering student, CD shopkeepers and PC dealers were involved in the piracy. The company seized PCs, hard disk, floppies and other counterfeit material worth Rs 5 lakh".
