The Business Software Alliance (BSA) said yesterday it planned to widen its campaign against software piracy with the help of the police this summer after receiving tip-offs on more than 300 companies allegedly using unlicensed software from major software developers.
The ramped-up anti-piracy effort comes after local investigators recently raided a well-known public relations (PR) agency and found it was using illegal copies of software such as Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator and Microsoft’s Office, the BSA’s Taiwan Committee said in a statement.
The police have detained executives of the PR agency for further investigation. They found the PR agency, whose name was not disclosed, had installed unlicensed software on 41 computers used by its employees, the BSA read.
The BSA, which represents the global commercial software industry, said the company’s copyright infringement amounted to a loss of roughly NT$5 million (US$152,000) for the software developers.
More than 300 local companies have been accused of software piracy, which is more than double the number for last year, the BSA’s local committee said.
Taiwan’s PC software piracy rate dropped below the world average for the first time last year, the BSA said last month. The nation’s software piracy rate fell to 39 percent last year, from 40 percent in 2007. The world average software piracy rate was 41 percent last year.
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