With the imminent demise of Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest pirate sites, and the likely imprisonment of its leaders, media attention is focused on the issue of software piracy in a big way. But for me the most important headlines of last week didn’t come from InformationWeek, CNET, or the Reg’s coverage of events in Stockholm. It came from Fokliftaction News, the unheralded voice of the remarkably obscure forklift industry.
When my brethren in the media write about piracy, the story is about the theft of OS’s, popular games, movies, and music. The result is a misperception that software piracy is a problem mostly of improperly supervised juvenile delinquents seeking gratuitous entertainment online. This is not the case.
The BSA reported $47 billion of software was stolen in 2007 worldwide. This includes a myriad of business applications, and it includes our friends from Forkliftaction.com
As their news story reports, “there is always a risk with pirated software that the information is tainted or the diagnostics will be incorrect. ‘This potentially puts people’s lives at risk. It could be fatal if people think a truck is repaired and it is not – that is the worst case scenario.” It also puts jobs at risk as the rightful sellers of the software lose the stolen revenue and cannot support current employees. This means more failed businesses and more lost jobs.
The number of professional software pirates targeting business applications is growing every day. They are looking for every type of application across every price point and industry. Most victims of crimes felt secure with an “it-will-never-happen-to-me” belief… right up to the point where they went from being naïve to being a victim.
Many organized crime networks engaged in software piracy will try to “fly below the radar” by pirating applications in lesser known vertical markets. A criminal knows it is easiest to steal where there is less protection and fewer are watching. So ask not for whom the pirates troll, they troll for thee, even if all you develop is simply forklift software.
