Software piracy has become a worldwide issue affecting many countries, Zambia inclusive. Globally, almost all personal computers are operating with software illegally obtained and installed. The number of computers with illegal software keeps increasing year by year.
According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA)’s most recent Global Software Survey in 2023, revealed that 37 per cent of software worldwide is unlicensed. This means more people are now using pirated software on other computers. The rise of software piracy is a concern because it has many devastating effects on society.
Just this year, Pratibha Syntex an Indian textile firm was ordered by the court to pay a fine of $100,000 as a settlement for using pirated software, including products from Microsoft and Adobe. The settlement reached the Los Angeles Superior Court, and they approved it.
This case is one example of the many cases where companies or people copy software to multiple computers or share software with without licenses. In most cases, companies or even people download pirated software from the Internet and share software without having the rights of the owners to do so. This is illegal and an offence.
Perhaps, some people involved in software piracy might not know what it is. Software piracy is the use of software that is not properly licensed. This might include copying, modifying, distributing, or selling the software in ways that contravene copyright laws or license terms. Today, there are many cases of software piracy, and some are committed knowingly. Sadly, many of these go unreported.
Davison Munsanda, President of the Zambia Association of Musicians (ZAM) once noted: “Software piracy has been in Zambia. People use and distribute copyrighted computer software almost all the time, this is a violation of the copyright law and robs companies of their revenue”. He adds: “The increase of illegal music apps has allowed the downloading of music without any person, and this has affected the music and film industry.”
There are many consequences of software piracy to society. Here are a few. One effect of software piracy is that, once software is installed illegally on a computer, it increases the chances of that software malfunctioning or even failing someone’s computer.
The other effect of software piracy is that once you install it, you forfeit access to support any program on your computer properly. This might affect the perfect operation of your computer.
The other major problem of software piracy is that there is no warranty on the software. This means that the software cannot be updated once it has been installed in the computer and so it will be operating on the same software for years.
Apart from these effects, software piracy has a more devastating effect on society. Any illegal installation of software on another computer takes away money from the programmer or developer who created the software. It takes more time to develop software and it is expensive. Thus, when software is pirated, it prevents the programmer or developer of that software from affording future development and in most cases, software is not easy to create.
Again, when software is pirated companies or businesses that invest in software tend to lose money or revenue because software has been pirated. The business that owns the software will not gain or receive any payment for the use of that software. This results in significant financial losses for the business especially when the pirated software has been distributed widely. According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA) report 2023 its estimates that the commercial value of unlicensed software globally was $46.3 billion. This is a huge cost to businesses.
Reuben Kajokoto, Director Legal at Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) notes, “it costs ZNBC a lot of money to acquire and produce its content and if it is pirated using pirated software, ZNBC cannot recoup the expenses and will eventually fail to produce and acquire new content.”
He adds: “The impact of piracy on our business is that viewers will not watch ZNBC on the traditional platforms. The traditional platforms belonging to ZNBC help the Corporation to attract advertisers. The more viewers ZNBC has on its channels the more advertisers we attract. But if these viewers go to the other illegal online sites, the damage to ZNBC is that they would have lost viewership, therefore may lose advertisers,”
Something to note also is that software piracy affects innovation. Businesses whose software has been pirated might be unable to generate sufficient revenue to invest in the development of new software products.
Software piracy has a huge negative economic impact on society. When software is pirated, the effects trickle down all the way down from the content creator to the employees of the affected business or company. This means that revenue loss will affect employees in getting salaries to feed families.
Overall, software piracy is a major issue affecting society. Consequently, companies need to implement anti-piracy protection systems on their software-based products to help prevent the vice.
Although software piracy hasn’t shown any signs of abating, it is encouraging that various institutions have taken up initiatives to fight piracy in general. Institutions like MultiChoice, MISA Zambia, Partners Against Piracy (PAP), Zambia Association of Musicians (ZAM), National Arts Council (NAC) and the Zambia Police among others have been on the radio and TV conducting interviews on the need to stop piracy. They have gone a step further to produce educative articles in the press and conducted workshops to raise awareness about the fight against piracy.
All the initiatives that have been done so far signify that the creative industry has remained vigilant about fighting software piracy.
