14 January 2008
by Simon Quicke
Those fighting software piracy are braced for more activity as customers look for cheap deals.
There were a number of high-profile efforts to counter piracy last year with Microsoft, the Federation Against Software Theft and the Business Software Alliance taking resellers and businesses to court.
Michala Wardell, UK head of anti-piracy at Microsoft, said a downturn or credit crunch could lead resellers to stray into selling pirate software to win business.
"As people get squeezed more there are definitely those who will take more risks and that is a risk for us as an industry," she said.
"We need to convince people that want to do things to get a deal it might look as if piracy is easy money but it is not, especially if you look at the costs of getting caught," she added.
John Lovelock, chief executive of FAST, said businesses could be prompted to use software asset management to save costs rather than turning to illegal products.
"Whether they turn towards the dark side is a hard one to call, but there are ways to cut costs with audits," he said.
One analyst said pirates would keep pirating this year but respectable resellers would avoid that side of the market.
"The bigger businesses cannot afford to get caught, the little guys pirating will be the ones continuing to do it," he said.
