BSA takes on software piracy in Asia
The Business Software Alliance has given out a clear signal about the illegal use of software in Asia. The Business Software Alliance recently setteled with an Asian company for a record sum of 3.6 million U.S dollar over software infringements. It is BSA’s largest settlement to date.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) - the organization that represents the interests of the global software industry – made the million dollar settlement with a Japanese manufacturer in Karsai. The investigation was prompted by a confidential report to BSA's piracy hotline in Japan. Subsequently, during a software audit on the site of the manufacturer 3913 copies of unlicensed software were found, including applications from Adobe, Autodesk, FileMaker and Microsoft.
Earlier in July, BSA led by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism performed a raid in Vietnam. At a Ho Chi Minh City resident foreign ICT company unlicensed software was found on 147 computers worth 100,000 U.S. dollars. A month later, a similar raid took place at a foreign car company with an office in Vietnam. This time, unlicensed software worth 664,000 U.S. dollars was found, including unlicensed copies of software from the Vietnamese company Luc Viet.
Most Vietnamese companies wouldn’t worry about the use of copyrighted software. When caught, the only legal consequence would be that real licenses of the illegally used software should be purchased. With the raids on companies in Vietnam and damages case in Japan, BSA wanted to sent out the message that software piracy has serious consequences. Even companies that have software licenses covered for their Western offices, would deliberately not cover this in Asia, because intellectual property rights would not be enforced.
Earlier this year, BSA announced that 43% of software worldwide is illegal. This would be mainly due to the rise of computer use in countries such as China.
Source: VietnamNews
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