Altium Joins BSA to Support Anti-piracy Crusade

Altium Ltd has joined the Business Software Alliance (BSA) as an Asian regional member. Membership of BSA gives Altium the opportunity to actively work with the highly respected body to assist in the reduction of software piracy and the education of the public about sound software management practices. Altium has previously been a BSA member in China.

BSA recently announced the results of their May 2007 BSA - IDC Global Software Piracy Study which found in Taiwan that software piracy has dropped two percentage points in 2006 to 41 percent. To further promote a reduction in the incidences of piracy in Taiwan, the BSA has been offering monetary rewards of up to NT$3 million for information on the unauthorized use of software. Altium is actively supporting BSA's campaign in Taiwan and agrees that any reduction in the piracy rate could help Taiwan's IT sector grow substantially, generating new jobs and opportunities for the local economy.

"Altium is pleased to be partnering with the BSA in countries such as Taiwan where software piracy is limiting the growth of the local economy," said Peter Williamson, Director of Sales, Asia Pacific, Altium. "First and foremost, Altium is a technology company whose mission is to help engineers build great electronic products through continual innovation of our Altium Designer unified electronics design software. Piracy only serves to undermine innovation on a global scale as it limits the return on R&D investment across the entire software development industry."

According to the May 2007 BSA - IDC Global Software Piracy Study, software piracy has many negative economic consequences, including local software industries crippled by competition with pirated software from abroad, lost tax revenues and jobs from lack of a legitimate market and, decreased business productivity from using unsupported and early version software. These costs also reverberate up and down the supply and distribution chains and greatly effect the viability of a strong software channel market.

"We are extremely delighted that Altium has decided to expand its membership into the Asia region," said Jeffrey Hardee, BSA Vice President and Regional Director for Asia-Pacific. "Altium will add tremendous value to BSA's campaigns in Asia, and its participation underlines the need for a united commitment to promote sound policies and legal framework that create a healthy business environment for the software industry and its hardware partners."

The BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study covers piracy of all packaged software that runs on personal computers, including desktops, laptops and ultra-portables. The study does not include other types of software such as server- or mainframe-based software. IDC used proprietary statistics for software and hardware shipments and enlisted IDC analysts in 50 countries to confirm software piracy trends.

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