According to the latest bad-news assessment of damage inflicted by copyright infringers in the software sector, South African software pirates are currently depriving industry of R1.9bn each year. The data comes from global technology research company IDC, which also reports that, though things may be bad in SA, they're worse elsewhere:
"... South Africa last year had a software piracy rate of only 34% compared to the African average of over 80% (Zimbabwe being 91%)".A reduction in piracy of 10 percentage points over four years could generate R6 billion in additional revenue in the South African information technology (IT) industry and as many as 1210 extra IT sector jobs.
Various types of infringement are identified, including “softlifting”, the purchase of a single licensed copy of software which is loaded on to several machines.
