KUALA LUMPUR, 12 May 2009: The personal computer (PC) software piracy level in Malaysia remained at 59% last year, similar to the rate registered in 2007.
According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA) findings released today, the monetary value of losses caused by software piracy, however, rose to US$368 million in 2008 from US$311 million in 2007.
BSA vice-president and Asia-Pacific regional director Jeffrey Hardee said the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry’s efforts in addressing corporate end-user software policy had borne fruit.
BSA, a non-profit organisation promoting a safe and legal digital world, is partnering IDC, a global provider of market intelligence, in conducting the yearly study which covers piracy of all packaged software that runs on PCs, including desktops, laptops and ultra-portables.
Speaking to the media here via telephone from Singapore today, Hardee said the worldwide PC software piracy rate rose for the second year in a row, from 38% to 41%, mainly because PC shipments grew fastest in high-piracy countries such as China and India.
He said there was an urgent need to ensure greater cooperation between enforcement authorities and copyright owners to effect stronger protection for the software copyright. — Bernama
Jake says
Non-profit organization? I highly doubt it.
tongkm says
Use Linux , OpenOffice, Firefox , Apache, which are free and all legal, why bother with BSA and Microsoft?
kahseng says
The Malaysian education system has failed the students by over-emphasizing proprietary software such as Microsoft programs. Students miss out on true innovation. The open source and free software have matured and are much easier to use now than five years ago.
There are now powerful, and easy-to-use, free software out there to download.
Start with OpenOffice. It contains a complete office suite with editor, spreadsheet, presentation, database (consider expensive MS Access), graphic, and other programs.
OpenOffice is so easy to use that primary school computer classes are teaching them. Their output is interchangeable with MS Office files. It can run on Linux or Windows XP and above. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice
http://download.openoffice.org/index.html
For Web server, database and scripting, try the very easy to use XAMPP package, which can run on Linux and Windows 98 and above. It contains a full suite of the most popular web software, such as Apache server, MySQL, PHP, mail and other programs. See
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAMPP
For free integrated development software, try Netbeans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbeans
The existing contents management systems (Drupal, Joomla, WordPress) and free Web services such as google’s many (mail, calendar, documents, picasa) and Skype services can fill out for many software needs in SOHO and even medium size office needs.
Malaysian colleges have been too dominated by Microsoft-sponsored programs and textbooks for so long that Malaysian youngsters have missed out on the true innovation potential of using the open source software, and making true global innovation.
Commercial colleges should break loose from Microsoft manipulation and go deeper into the large open source community that has matured and made their software much easier to use.
Check out
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/
U-Jean says
Surprising. Looks higher than 59% to me.