Too early to forecast fall in use of pirated software in Ukraine, says BSA
Kyiv, April 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ukrainian representative office of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has said that it is too early to forecast a fall in the level of use of unlicensed software in Ukraine.
"Piracy is a comprehensive problem and depends on many factors: the activity of copyright owners, the activity of the state, the political and economic situation in the country. It remains to be seen how these factors impact the situation," the head of BSA's representative office, Danylo Kliuchnykov, said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
As reported, Mykola Myrchych, who was appointed head of the department of intellectual property rights protection at the Ukrainian representative office of Microsoft in early 2009, forecasts the level of use of pirated software will fall to 60% within the nearest three to five years. He also forecasted the level of piracy in Ukraine would rise by one percentage point, to 84%.
Commenting on Myrchych's forecasts, Kliuchnykov said that the level of use of pirate software this year might be the same as last year.
"I wouldn't like to comment on the reasons for this, and propose to wait for a report of IDC [market research firm], as there are a number of reasons," he said.
BSA legal advisor Vladyslav Shapoval, in turn, said at the press conference that Ukrainian law on fighting piracy is imperfect.
He said that an application by copyright owners is required to open criminal cases against rights infringers in Ukraine, which does not allow the controlling bodies to impose punishment on the pirates themselves. In addition, responsibility for use of pirated software is imposed on the person that installed pirate software, not the company, and there is no a mechanism for punishing someone for releasing pirated copies through the Internet.
Shapoval said that explanatory work with authorship rights infringers is important. He said that if in April to December 2008, the BSA carried out 57 checks, and 38 appeals were submitted to courts, in the three months of 2009, 72 checks led to only five court hearings.
The BSA is a non-commercial international organization, the goals of which are to support the legal and safe use of software.
Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, CNC, Corel, Microsoft, Monotype, Quark, Mindjet, Siemens PLM Software, SolidWorks, Symantec, The MathWorks, Altium, Centennial Software, Enteo Software, Famatech, O&O Software, Staff & Line and Tekla are participants of the BSA.
The BSA started its activities in Ukraine in April 2008.