Going legit: understanding the impact and value of software 1
Information technology has been seen as the sector that will in the coming decade create thousands of jobs by way of birthing new companies to exploit new niches, providing tools that enable access to a hither to unreachable market segment and the export of services through outsourcing. As we get excited by the new opportunities we must pay close attention to the accompanying issues that we have in the past let slip by silently.
As we start to create our own services {think beyond IT here…the arts, music, creative, manufacturing } and build platforms that we hope to sell to consumers, we start to encounter terms such as Intellectual Property which often elicit fear as we do not want our IP rights to be abused and / or our work stolen.
If this be the case, why is it then that we feel it is ok to infringe on the rights of others by blatantly disregarding their intellectual property by way of using software without commensurate compensation to its creator?
Yes…piracy.
A bit less of a bite when it’s not happening in the high seas off the coast of Somalia but the economic costs of the act can be a sniff away from the ransom amounts that we gasp at. It is reported that 8 out of every 10 computers in Kenya runs on pirated software, with this happening in a variety of ways.
I think that the value of software, licensing and IP rights may be lost on us because we have not felt the impact of counterfeiting and piracy ourselves. There are different schools of thought surrounding the this matter and debate could go on for ages. My benchmark is simple and may not be politically correct, but I believe if you make money from it, then you best pay for it.
The most pirated software suites in Kenya in my books {no particular order} are : Microsoft Office, Adobe and accounting packages {Quickbooks etc}
Do you pay for the software that you use? If not…why? Are the avenues to do so lacking? Do you perceive the value derived as less than the asking price?
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