Anti-piracy team goes on net offensive in Asia

A prominent anti-software piracy group has begun to target Asia-Pacific websites and users of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, looking for those who trade in illegal software.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), whose members include large firms such as Adobe and Microsoft, has recently aimed its software-sniffing web crawler specifically at Asia-Pacific sites, said a spokesman.

The action was prompted by the high rates of internet-based piracy in the region, which is beginning to rival more traditional methods such as illegal discs, said Jeffrey Hardee, BSA vice president and regional director, Asia Pacific.

"P2P is one the biggest problems we have in Asia Pacific, " he said. As for the websites, he expected the crawler to turn up thousands of infringing sites every month.

So far, software-swapping websites have been found in Singapore, Korea Taiwan, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and China, he said.

Many of these websites discovered by the crawler have been shut down by the internet service providers (ISPs) hosting them after being served with a legal letter called a 'notice of take-down' by the BSA.

So far, most ISPs have readily complied, said Hardee.

"It's a relationship that needs to work in order for use to bring down the levels of piracy on the internet. A few not taken action but that's more the exception and not the rule," he said.

While the BSA was not behind the recent arrest of students in Sydney, Australia who were sharing music files, he did not rule out police action against those who share software on the internet "if governments decide to enforce legislation', he said.

The web crawler used by BSA comes from BayTSP, a Los Gatos, California, company that also monitors file-swapping networks for movie studios and record labels.

While many websites with illegal software have been taken down, the question of what to do about illegal software on P2P networks such as Kazaa remains open, as the machines serving the illegal files are users' own PCs, rather than an ISP-hosted computer.

Sharman Networks, the parent of Kazaa, is currently being sued by recording companies and Hollywood studios for aiding copyright infringement. Executives of the studios have said that they can identify the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of individual users of P2P clients.

According to the BSA, the average piracy rate for commercial software across Asia-Pacific is at its highest level since 1996, with dollar losses in the region last year at a record high of $5.5bn. The average software piracy rate in Asia-Pacific rose for the third year in a row and stood at 55 per cent in 2002.

In 1994, Asia-Pacific's piracy level was 68 per cent and by 1999 the rate had dropped to 47 per cent. However, as more people in China became computer users and demand for pirated software rocketed, the rate started climbing again the following year, to today's record level.

John Lui writes for CNET News.com.