The Curse of Piracy

Piracy remains one of the major pain points for the
software industry. In a country like India, this not only means lesser business,
but also a lop-sided estimate of the market, usually wide off the mark. The
graphics software giant, Adobe has been one long-suffering victim, who has been
bleeding for years now.

Says Naresh Gupta, senior vice president, print and
classic publishing business unit and managing director, India research and
development, Adobe Systems, "India is one of the fastest growing markets, but it
contributes less than 1% to the overall business. Had there been no piracy, we
would have easily garnered around 5% of the business." This means, owing to
piracy, it is losing over 80% of its potential business in India. According to
Dataquest estimates, Adobe India did business worth about Rs 300 crore in India
in FY 09. Going by Guptas assertion, even on a conservative estimate, Adobe
India should be doing business worth more than Rs 1,000 crore in India.

So is there any sort of remedy available for Adobe? There
is the growing realization that only evangelism drives might not be enough to
rectify the situation.

Like Microsoft that recently unleashed a series of
lawsuits, and is cooperating in the criminal prosecutions worldwide in order to
curb the piracy of its software, Adobe too has adopted various options to bring
down piracy from rewarding to penalizing the party. "We practice various
policies for bringing down the piracy like discount offers and awareness
programs. We offer 30-40% discount on our licensed copies to many e-learning,
creative and educational firms. We have also conducted raids in various
illegitimate agencies with the help of the government," informs Gupta. "The
present market of piracy software would be 90% of the software market, even
though there has been a dip in the piracy levels from the past," he adds.

Though the anti-piracy campaign is more a combination of
education and enforcement measures, Adobe has launched a series of enforcement
activities recently in Delhi. During these recent measures, the law enforcement
team seized hundreds of unlicensed copies of Adobe products, including Adobe
Photoshop CS3, The Adobe Creative Suite 3, Adobe Acrobat 8, Adobe Flash CS3,
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and Adobe Illustrator CS3.

At the same time, Adobe is educating its users about the
various Adobe licensing programs and the concept of software asset management to
ensure they are working within the law. Wherever they find flagrant violations
of the intellectual property, they are taking legal action against both the
distribution channel and the purchaser to protect their rights.

The increasing focus on the mobile marketAdobe has a
collaboration with Qualcomm and $10 mn partnership with Nokia for the open
source screen projectmight help too. The level of piracy on the mobile front is
much less compared to that on desktops. Adobe aims to leverage the growing
market for e-book readers in India and has already announced support for e-book,
and PDF support for mobile devices.

Adobe had earmarked about Rs 20 crore for expanding its
infrastructure in Noida and Bengaluru, but is still waiting to resolve the
property-related issues like setting up the centers. Last month, Adobe had
announced layoffs of around 25% of the global workforce, but none was from
India. He adds that Adobe is instead more focused on India, and is making plans
for expansion by hiring more people here.

Akanksha Prasad/CIOL

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