California Governor Gray Davis says the software piracy problem is bad enough that some state agencies charged with stopping it may inadvertently be using counterfeit software themselves. On Friday, Davis signed an executive order that state agencies enforce compliance within their own offices in addition to reporting possible software piracy elsewhere.
Among those attending Friday's signing was Microsoft, which has sued four California companies and says the fact that pirated software reach government offices tells how sophisticated the thieves have become.
"This isn't just mom and pop," Microsoft government affairs spokesman Dan Bross tells ZDNet News. "This is organized crime."
High-tech business watchdog analysts estimate software piracy costs about $11 billion worldwide including $2.8 billion in the United States, including lost wages and sales taxes, ZDNet says. The online news service quotes one analyst as saying that government agencies are particularly vulnerable to pirated software because they have official mandates to get their products and services at the lowest submitted bid.
"Often the lowest bid seems too good to be true, and sometimes it is," Becca Gould of the Business Software Alliance tells ZDNet.
And the Internet often makes it more difficult a picture. The Net makes it more difficult to prosecute anti-piracy cases, ZDNet says, despite the stiff penalties software piracy carries. Moreover, the online news service says, not only can counterfeiters distribute their wares easily over the Web, but a good deal of software packages auctioned on popular online sites such as eBay turn out to have been counterfeit.
