Indonesia Ranks As The 11th Worst Pirating Nation

Although Indonesia as a whole has a pretty good understanding of technology, the level of software piracy in this country is still high according to a study from the Business Software Alliance Indonesia (BSA), jointly conducted with the International Data Corporation (IDC).

The study asserts that the commercial value of illegal software in the Asia Pacific region reached $18.7 billion. It also claims the global the revenue lost due to software piracy jumped to $59 billion, nearly double what it was in 2003. For Indonesia, the study says the commercial value of software without licenses that are installed on personal computers reached $1.32 billion in 2010. BSA says that it isn’t just personal users, but many companies still don’t realize that they’re using illegal software

Keep in mind however that the BSA is an organization that promotes copy protection, so this isn’t the most objective of study in the world. Furthermore, for the BSA to assign a certain amount of dollars lost to each act of piracy assumes that each pirate would have purchased that software at full price if they had not stolen it. This obviously is not the case, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see which nations pirate the most, and which ones pirate the least. Check out the charts below, and notice that Indonesia ranks number 11 on the ‘Bad Guys’ list. It’s interesting to note the other countries on that list, as well as the ones who pirate the least.

Donny Sheyoputra, Chief Representative of BSA Indonesia said, “The study shows that people need more education about software, that the software downloaded from P2P networks is mostly illegal, and installation of software licensed for one computer but installed on several computers at home or in the office is piracy.”

The Indonesian government has decided to jump into the piracy wars as well. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stated that intellectual property rights must be protected and that violations must be eliminated. To that end, the government has formed a National Team for Combating Violations of Intellectual Property Rights and launched the “Fight Pirated Software … For Better Indonesia” campaign in October of last year. The government and the BSA will also provide training for investigators from the Police Force to better fight piracy.

While educating the public why they shouldn’t pirate might be great for rights holders, in contrast there are other education programs that benefit Indonesians directly. Recently an independent community conducted a computer literacy programs and promoted the use of open source software to avoid piracy. Likewise, its good to see the Indonesian government also promote the use of open source software as well.

While Indonesia scored a 87% in pirating percentage, other Asia nations like China scored 78%, South Korea 40%, Taiwan 37%, Singapore 34% and Japan was tied with the US for the nation that pirates the least, both at 20%