Moving software to the cloud will have an impact on the piracy industry, according to co-chair of the Business Software Alliance of Australia (BSAA), Clayton Noble.
Noble said while the rate of piracy has gone down over the past four years, cloud based applications will change the type of piracy the BSAA will combat.
“The cloud will really change piracy because you won't have hardware as such, you'll subscribe to a service,” Noble said.
“It doesn’t mean there won’t be piracy, but when we get into the cloud we may find people are selling patches and those sorts of things.”
The BSAA made 12 settlements in Australia last year and is encouraging employees to ‘dob-in’ their bosses.
“Our new campaign is around encouraging people at work to speak up if their company is doing the wrong thing and to report it.”
Noble warned businesses using pirated software that there may be more than just court action to face up to.
“We had a study done by IDC who searched the internet for sources of hacked software and keys. 25 per cent of pirated software had malware,” he said.
“On top of this, if you have pirated software, you might not be receiving all of your software updates.”
Noble also suggested IT departments look at creating a role aimed at ensuring organisations are up to date with licensing agreements, and don’t implement pirated software and monitoring licences.