Software piracy costs computer industry over $25 billion a year

SANCTIONS should be imposed on countries that fail to enforce anti-computer software piracy measures, the chairman and chief executive of McAfee, one of the leading security software companies in the world said yesterday.

George Samenuk, speaking at the opening of his company’s new Irish operations centre in Cork, said software piracy was costing the computer software industry over $25 billion a year in lost revenues.

“We think there should be very strict penalties against countries that don’t enforce anti-piracy measures up to a point where countries like the US should block imports from those countries that advocate and encourage piracy.”