Pirates on Land

In the modern day world, piracy has emerged as one of the key concerns for global organisations. From music labels to software giants, this menace has been haunting all major companies in the fields of media, entertainment and software.

In India, the piracy rate has been gradually decreasing in the past few years. However, this fall has been very stagnant in nature, falling at an average rate of only one percent. In contrast, China reduced its piracy rate from 90 percent in 2004 to 82 percent in 2006. Though software piracy in India fell to 69 percent in 2007 from 71 percent in the previous year, the industry's losses in revenue rose to USD 2 billion in 2007 from USD 1.28 billion in 2006. Globally, this loss has increased by a whopping 500 percent from USD 8 billion to USD 48 billion.

Software piracy affects much more than just the industry revenues; it even hits the job market and eventually the country's economic growth. According to the Business Software Alliance India, 38 percent of the software in the world is bootlegged, which accounts for a loss of USD 46 billion. In India alone, this number stands at 69 percent. An economic impact study conducted by IDC revealed that with the reduction of PC software piracy in India by 10 percent over a period of four years could result in an additional 44,000 new jobs, USD 3.1 billion in economic growth, and USD 200 million in tax revenues.

Moving over to the Indian media & entertainment sector, piracy in this sector is much more dominant due to the total lack of security and encryption techniques. According to a recent Ernst & Young and US-India Business Council study, the estimated cost of piracy to the Indian film and entertainment business is a whopping USD 4 billion. The total cost to the film industry alone is roughly USD 1 billion. As many as 800,000 direct jobs are also lost as a result of theft and piracy, afflicting India's entertainment industry.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has taken stringent steps in the recent years to curb this menace. The government has introduced stricter legislations and tougher policies as well as increased the number of raids on these illegal activities. Entertainment companies like Moser Baer have introduced legit movie DVDs at very low rates to hamper the sales of the pirated movies. However, all these steps seem to be small for a country as big as India. Thousands still sell pirated goods openly, hurting the domestic and international entertainment and software businesses. India needs to take efficient steps to eradicate piracy from the streets totally.