The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has found that Australians are becoming more active in their reporting of software piracy with some 161 reports of illegals software use received by the organisation last year.
Software piracy occured across a range of industries, including design, services, architecture, software development and media.
According to the BSA, this was a new record in piracy tip-offs. In 2009 it received 95 reports of pirated software use.
BSA Australia Committee co-chair, Clayton Noble, said the increase in reports proved the organisation was achieving its goal of educating corporate Australia about the value of genuine software.
The Alliance ran a dob-in-a-pirate campaign, `Feeling uncomfortable at work’, last year to encourage the public to report pirate software use in their workplaces.
According to Noble, Australia’s software piracy rate, as measured by analyst firm IDC, has been steadily declining at the rate of one percentage point per year for the last four consecutive years.
Noble has previously urged company directors to check they had adequate software asset management procedures in place.
“In some circumstances directors have been held personally liable for damages when their company was found to have infringed software copyrights,” he said.
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