An All Time Low

Software piracy in Singapore has dropped to an all time low of 36 per cent, reports the Business Times. This is a significant milestone in Singapore’s anti-piracy efforts, the last being Singapore's removal from the United States Trade Representative Office’s Special 301 Watch List in 2001.

However, there is much room for improvement. Singapore is bested by countries in the Asia-Pacific region such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan which have software piracy rates of 26, 22 and 21 per cent respectively. Still, the staggering dollar losses continue to rise; from US$159 million in 2007 to US$163 million in 2008 (Singapore) and from US$14 billion in 2007 to US$15 billion in 2008 (Asia Pacific).

Globally, piracy has risen from 38 per cent to 41 per cent, despite decreases in 57 of the 110 countries surveyed.

Please note that the above references to software piracy pertain to personal computer software. I wonder what the figures would be like taking into account all other platforms such as Playstation and Xbox. If anyone out there has these statistics, please send them our way.

The long and short of it

Singapore has become rather well-known for her unusual fetish for acronyms.  See here and here.  There is even an alarmingly long list compiled by the people at Wikipedia. 

And here’s yet another – SAM or software asset management, which refers to recognising, managing and controlling the software that an organisation or business owns.   

The first step of SAM is to know exactly what software you own, and to ensure that you have not infringed anybody’s copyright.  The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation launched a campaign yesterday to help small and medium enterprises stay clear of infringement suits by the Business Software Alliance, which represents software giants such as Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe.   

Businesses may from now till 21 June sign up for a voluntary software audit and if they are found to be using unlicensed products, they have 14 days to right the situation.  They may purchase licensed products at a discounted price up to 30 June.  The most reassuring part of the audit is that compliant businesses will have immunity from lawsuits up to 21 June 2010.  

The message from IPOS and SITF is clear : to avoid being sued by BSA for copyright infringement, SMEs are encouraged to sign up for the voluntary audit.  Other organisations such as ASME, DAS, SBF, SIA and SICC have also committed their support to this campaign.

Is your business SAM ready?