Julian McMenamin, Chairman, BSA Ireland, commented, BSA Ireland s activities and the enactment of the new Copyright Bill can be attributed to the decrease in Ireland s very high piracy rate. We are especially delighted with the Government s continuing efforts to combat software piracy in Ireland. Furthermore, many companies are taking very seriously the significant penalties that the new Copyright legislation now carries for software infringements and consequently have availed of our recent Truce and Software Audit Return campaigns to get legal. While this downward trend is encouraging, it still does not show Ireland in a very good light.
Software piracy is a crime.
A bigger concerted effort needs to be made to protect our industry. BSA Ireland will continue to step up its efforts to eradicate software piracy from Ireland, continued Julian McMenamin. On a world-wide scale, one in every three pieces of business software is pirated. Although the piracy rates in several regions and countries have decreased, software piracy continues to rob the global marketplace of thousands of jobs, billions in wages and tax revenues, said Beth Scott, Vice President, Europe, Business Software Alliance. In an effort to curb software piracy world-wide, BSA continues to implement educational and enforcement activities and work with governments around the world to support our efforts to address the software piracy problem.