Software piracy in the city continues to be a problem, with nearly 45 percent of applications installed on local computers cited as unlicensed, or "pirated", copies, according to the findings of a survey by an international information technology trade organization.

Despite so, the Business Software Alliance's 2010 Global Software Piracy Study released on Friday says the situation is improving in the city, as the piracy rate is 8 percentage points down compared with that in 2006, and has hit the lowest level in five years.

The 8 percentage points decline in software piracy is the biggest drop in the Asia Pacific region, according to the survey.

However, the city's piracy rate remains 3 percentage points above the global average of 42 percent, and much higher than those of neighboring economies, such as Singapore (34 percent), Taiwan (37 percent) and South Korea (40 percent).

"Actions being taken by Hong Kong obviously have an effect, but it still has some way to go before catching other countries," says Tarun Sawney, senior director of the organization's Asia Pacific branch.

The study jointly conducted by the trade organization and the International Data Corporation, an information technology research firm, tracked all packaged software installed on computers for home and business use in 116 economies worldwide.

In the city, the Customs and Excise Department handled 236 cases of corporate computer software piracy and prosecuted 501 offenders from April 2001 to April 2011, said Albert Ho, a senior superintendent from the department.

The city established its Law of Copyrights in 2001.

"In 2008, we had a new ordinance that allows us to hold board members and directors of companies liable for software piracy offenses," said Ho.

"Ninety percent of the offenders were from small companies that installed software licensed to one machine onto multiple ones, or simply purchased unlicensed software."

On the individual level, Ho said individual users tend to download unlicensed music, TV shows and movies.

However, he said it is not the department's duty to prosecute individual offenders.

"What we can do and have been doing is to launch a series of preventative initiatives and crack down on pirated software sellers," he said.

The department, in collaboration with the Intellectual Property Department, supported the Business Software Alliance in the launch of a TV advertising campaign in 2010, including an educational program targeting young computer users.

"We would like to remind users that unlicensed software is much riskier than legally purchased software, in the sense that they are more inclined to be hacked or suffer data loss because of insufficient security configurations," Winnie Yeung, chairwoman of the trade organization's Hong Kong and Macao Committee, told reporters via teleconference.

Yeung suggested that small and medium-sized enterprises turn to cloud computing technology, an emerging technology that draws on networked resources to solve problems via the Internet.

It is the eighth year that the the annual research has been carried out.

The United States boasted the globally lowest software piracy rate of 20 percent, in 2010.

On the Chinese mainland, the rate was 78 percent.

China Daily

(HK Edition 05/14/2011 page1)