Bangladesh ranks 2nd in software piracy

With 92 percent software piracy in Bangladesh, the first in the Asian Pacific region and the second highest in the world, the country's experts urged the government to initiate a move for use of open sourcessoftware, reports UNB.

A report, Global Software Piracy Study 2008, published in 2009 and conducted by IDC, the IT industry's leading global market research and forecasting firm, warned that the software piracy in Bangladesh is crippling the local industry and costing the local retailers US$ 102 million a year.
The report revealed that the worst offender is Georgia at 95 percent. It's followed by Armenia and Zimbabwe at 92 percent while the US is the country with the lowest piracy rate at 20 percent. Then follow Japan andLuxembourg at 21 percent each.
In Bangladesh the piracy rate actually remain same at 92 percent for last two years. The report's data measure piracy for all of 2008 and do not include data from 2009.
Meanwhile, at a seminar here, the experts on Thursday urged the government to initiate a move for introducing the Open Source Software(OSS) to protect against software piracy.
The seminar titled `Economical Art of Using Open Source Software to Protect against Piracy,' was jointly organized by Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), Access To Information (A2I) Programme under the Prime Minister Office (PMO), and Management At The Top (MAAT)-2 at the city' s Agargaon.
State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman, Prof Dr MuhammadZafar Iqbal, and Science and ICT secretary AKM Abdul Awal were, among others, present at the seminar chaired by BCC executive director M Mahfuz Rahman.
A2I Programme Implementation Specialist Munir Hasan and Deputy Director of WTO Cell at the Commerce Ministry Sharifa Khan presented two papers at the seminar.
In his presentation, Munir Hasan said the Open Source Software (OSS) is a computer software for which the source code and certain other rights, normally reserved for copyright holders, are provided under a software license that meets the Open Source Definition or that is in the public domain. "OSS permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms."
He said the country can remove the ill reputation in the world arena to by introducing OSS usage.
About the Bank software, the A2I Programme Implementation Specialist said most of the Bangladeshi banks are under threat due to the license software.
"We even don't know what is inside the license software because of its manufacture- limitations, which may result catastrophe for these banks if the software is hacked or disrupted somehow," he warned.
Sharifa Khan, in her presentation, said it is very important to protect against piracy to attract Foreign Direct Investment for the sake of country's reputation.
"But we have to spend at least Tk 45,000 per PC to buy license software, which is not affordable for the Bangladeshi students… we should encourage the OSS as it's an economical initiative."
She said if Bangladesh introduces the OSS usage the international piracy monitoring firms will not name Bangladesh in their list of software piracy.
State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman said the government would take all possible initiatives to incorporate latest technology and remove the obstacles to getting maximum ICT services.