by Worldroom Digest
October 2004

Despite several measures adopted by law enforcement agents in collaboration with anti-piracy organizations including Business Software Alliance, BSA, Nigerian Copyright Commission, NCC and the software giant, Microsoft, to fight the alarming rate of software piracy in the Nigerian market, the ugly trend has continued to pose a challenge.

Although software is one of the most valuable technologies of the information age, running everything from PCs to the internet, new technologies have made it so easy to create an exact copy of a program in seconds, thereby increasing the ugly trend.

At the popular Otigba market and other commercial centers across the federation, Vanguard investigations revealed that pirated software products are now growing at geometric progression because of its relative low prices, in spite of several raids activities carried by the law enforcement agents.

From individual computer users to professionals, for instance, piracy exists in homes, schools, businesses and government despite market based solutions, along with education and enforcement of existing laws.

The worst part of the story, according to Business Software Alliance, is that software pirates not only steal from the companies that make the software, they make them lose valuable revenue that would have been used for research and development, thereby affecting the end users.

Against this backdrop, the Nigerian Copyright Commission has already directed all optical disc replicating factories in the country to formally notify the Commission of their operation to enable it maintain a registry and data banks of protected works.

The NCC Director General, Mr Adebambo Adewopo who gave this directives in a consultative session with the officials of the International Federation of phono- graphic industries {IFPTI} in Abuja said that the measures would help the Commission check the alarming rate of piracy in the country and also change the perception of Nigeria as a dumping ground for fake and pirated Compact Discs and Video CDs and other software products.

The Commission said that piracy activities are not only an injustice to Nigeria but also a great reap off on the artistes whose intellectual properties were being pirated.

One of the anti-Piracy Group, BSA believes that new technologies should be evolved so as to enhance ways to access and distribute copyrighted works legally.

This is because strong copyright protections are essential to the health and growth of the software industry worldwide as software is the original digital medium - and a medium that loses nearly $13 billion a year globally to piracy.

Before now, software makers have been fighting digital piracy for more than a decade as protection of intellectual property and the revenue it generates is necessary to fund the innovations that keep the industry and world economies growing.

For the keen observers in the IT industry, the Nigeria's growing software piracy, is very worrisome, even in 2002, according to available statistics, software piracy rate stood at 84 per cent, representing a loss of about $46.9 million .

Industry watchers have also said that software piracy causes widespread damage to business, industry and most importantly to everyone.

Every year, both on nation and global level, billions of dollars are lost to software piracy, which is the illegal distribution and/or copying of software for personal and/or business use.

In 1996 for instance, according to available statistics, the total losses sustained by the software industry as a direct result of software piracy were in excess of fifteen billion dollars worldwide.

What many people fail to realize is that the harmful effects of software piracy reach far beyond the software publisher. While countries like Nigeria certainly feel the crunch because of software pirates, the ultimate victim in this crime is the consumer.

The mere fact is that pirating software is stealing, that will definitely make prices of the products go up. The more revenue that's lost because of stolen goods, the less that can be spent on research and development of new products and new innovations.