High Tech Piracy

It’s the company that buys one copy of a product in the United States or another country, and presses it onto thousands of CDs for illicit sale overseas. It’s the woman who sits next to you at work and copies a popular screen saver for you. And it’s the guy down the street who installs his favorite game on your computer. It may even be you.

Software piracy is a multimillion dollar business. The Software Publisher’s Association estimates that the total losses to U.S. businesses from illegally copied or manufactured software was $ 8.1 billion in 1994, the latest year for which statistics are available. The portion of this attributable to Latin America was $361.8 million. With the boom in computer usage from Mexico City to Punta Arenas, that number is surely skyrocketing.

How do you know if you’re buying a pirated product? Most software today is sold on CD-ROM and shipped in boxes. Pirates reduce costs by selling the CD directly in the jewel case, often with a shortened manual inside. "Be careful if eighty to ninety percent of the software in a store is sold only in the jewel case, rather than in the original packaging," says Sherry Franceti, Director of Marketing for Miami’s Metro Technology Group Inc., a distributor of major brand multimedia software throughout Latin America.

Franceti has seen her company’s products pirated in stores in Venezuela and other Latin countries. "Usually the packaging tips you off," she says. "Graphics from the product are poorly reproduced on a color copier and cut to fit the jewel case."

The main weapons in the fight against piracy are publicity and enforcement, letting people know that software piracy is a crime, and prosecuting manufacturers and retailers. Despite government and industry efforts, however, software piracy is likely to continue to grow as computers become more common in Latin homes and offices.