Infested, pirated softwares crippling businesses — Report

More than 60 per cent of businesses and organisations in the country operate with either pirated or infested softwares, a study by Miscrosoft in Ghana has indicated.

Similarly, it causes businesses globally to spend an estimated $127 billion every year to help correct the anomalies, the business survey report said.

According to the Country Manager of Microsoft Ghana, Mr Derek Appiah, the phenomenon was not unique to only businesses, but also individuals, noting that “consumers spend about $25 billion and waste 1.2 billion hours on infested softwares regularly”.

In his view, if the situation was not addressed quickly, businesses would continue losing huge sums of money and that would affect their operations.

To help deal with the situation, Mr Appiah said that Microsoft would be collaborating with Copyright Ghana and other stakeholders to deal with piracy. 

World Intellectual Property Day

Mr Appiah was speaking during the commemoration of this year’s World Intellectual Property Day in Accra. The programme was put together by Microsoft Ghana and Copyright Ghana.

Marked on April 26 every year, the global theme for this year was “Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined.”

The day is usually celebrated to educate people on the role that intellectual property rights, including patents, trademarks, industrial designs and copyright play in encouraging innovation and creativity across the globe. 

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This year, the focus was on how a balanced and flexible intellectual property system could help ensure that those working in the creative sector were properly paid for their work.

Dealing with piracy 

At a roundtable discussion to deliberate on the theme for Ghana, “IP: Creative industries - managing the benefits of the digital environment,” the Secretary of the Audio-visuals Rights Society of Ghana (ARSOG), Mr Abeiku Sagoe, called for marketing strategies to deal with piracy.

According to him, musicians and artists should not just dump their works on the Internet, but rather arrange with specialised organisations to monitor and charge those who used the works.

“We have found out that artists usually upload their works onto the Internet, and that gives anybody the chance to take advantage without paying any amount to the owners,” he added.

The Chairman of Softtribe, a software company in Ghana, Mr Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse, also called on producers and artists to adopt innovative ways to counter the activities of pirates.

“Intellectual Property is an economic asset and we must do everything possible to protect the creators and producers,” he said.

Mr Chinery-Hesse further advocated the adoption of new laws which could address the changes in technology across the world and further combat the activities of fraudsters.

Sensitisation 

For her part, the acting Administrator of Copyright Ghana, Ms Yaa Attafua, said a lot of sensitisation was currently ongoing to educate producers and creators on the remedies available to them when their copyrights were infringed upon.

She called for the introduction of digital locks by producers so that their works could only be made available to the right users.

The Director of the Fraud Unit of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent Felix Mawusi, also called on copyright owners to desist from intervening whenever the police arrested pirates.