Economic slump fails to fuel software piracy
Because copyright protection has only existed since 1994 and powerful legal tools to combat piracy were not introduced until 1998, the law has still not transformed the attitudes of many companies and individual computer users.
"I certainly don't feel good about it, but I do have some understanding of why it happens," Kucharski said. "Copyright legislation is relatively new in this country, so there is still an awareness problem. I can still remember taping songs off the radio myself. It is quite another thing to think about it as the owner of a business that could potentially be twice as big were it not for piracy."
But Kucharski can afford to be understanding. YDP's strategy is to ditch the pirates by pushing sales to Western Europe, where intellectual property rights are more secure, resulting in a 53% boost to exports of language training software last year.
"Our programs are the most pirated products in Poland," said Natalia Hatalska, the public relations manager at YDP, who added that the programs were easily available at Warsaw's Stadion Dziesięciolecia, the stadium marketplace where inexpensive contraband goods are often sold. "If not for exports, piracy would render our sales in Poland insignificant."
Last year Poland was alone among its neighbors in Western, Central and Eastern Europe in showing a decline in software piracy, contrary to industry fears that the current economic slowdown would make more firms reach for illegal copies. Pirated software declined from 54% of all software in use in 2000 to 53% in 2001, a minor improvement compared to the 10% decrease in 1997.
In Central and Eastern Europe the incidence of illegal copies of business software grew from 63% in 2000 to 67% last year, while Western Europe saw an increase from 34% to 37%, according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA).
The BSA, which aims to increase awareness of intellectual property rights and prosecute offenders, is funded by the world's largest software producers, including Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and Macromedia. It blames the growth of software piracy on the global economic slowdown, changing attitudes to copyright law, the growth of Internet piracy and the fact that European companies are more interested in investing in equipment than software.
The dip in Polish copyright crime was brought about by increased police action against computer stores that bundle unlicensed operating systems and software with computers, said Marja Laitinen, the vice president of BSA in Central and Eastern Europe.
"The police in Poland are probably the most efficient in fighting software piracy compared to other Central and Eastern European countries," she said. "They are systematic in their actions."
As a result, the BSA has seen a falloff in the number of police raids this year, said Michał Sowiński, a lawyer for the BSA at Warsaw law firm S. Sołtyński, A. Krawecki & A. Szlęczak - Doradcy Prawni.
"Last year and 2000 were really exceptional years because we initiated a very large number of inspections," he said. "In many of this year's inspections, the police did not find proof of this form of criminal activity."
In the first eight months of this year, the police carried out only 31 raids on computer shops suspected of selling computers equipped with unlicensed software, compared to the 126 raids carried out in 2001, while the number of arrests fell from 329 to 114.
But the improvements are far from encouraging for domestic software producers who cater to individual clients, Kucharski said.
"The market for software for individual clients is still relatively small in Poland and is worth zł. 20 million ($4.7 million)," he said. "This means that software firms are losing more than zł. 10 million ($2.4 million) in sales each year."
