Gov't strive to root out pirated software
By Zhao Huanxin (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-04-20 12:53
China's intellectual property right (IPR) watchdog is doing all it can to
promote the use of legitimate software, officials said yesterday in
Beijing.
Licensed software is used in all government departments, and
being installed in more and more computers used by enterprises and individuals,
they told a press conference held by the State Council Information
Office.
To root out pirated software in its offices, the central
government alone has earmarked up to 150 million yuan (US$18.5 million) to foot
the bill of licensed products. Local authorities have also allocated funds for
purchase of authorized software, said the National Copyright Administration of
China spokesman Wang Ziqiang.
The country's piracy rate hyped by some in
the United States to be as high as 70 per cent in government computers, and up
to 94 per cent in the entire software market is "groundless," he
said.
Wang was asked to comment on a recent statement by US Commerce
Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, which claimed up to 70 per cent of software in
Chinese government computers was pirated.
Another report by the Business
Software Alliance (BSA), an anti-piracy group largely comprising US software
companies, alleged that between 88 and 94 per cent of software used in China is
unlicensed.
Wang explained government offices at various levels were
required to check how many of their applications were pirated.
They then
submitted their needs for licensed software to relevant government departments,
which procured legal products for them from software providers.
"Now that
the governments, not individual offices, are paying the bill, who would continue
using pirated products at the risk of violating statutes and shouldering
possible liabilities?" he said.
Gutierrez's statement, therefore, was not
backed by facts and was groundless, he said.
In response to the BSA's
allegation, Wang said: "I've found neither facts nor reasons to support the
alliance's calculation of the piracy rate in China."
China's software
industry output hit 390 billion yuan (US$48.1 billion) last year. If pirated
software had been 11 to 12 times as much as that, it would have meant that the
country's software market was worth 4,000 billion yuan (US$493.8 billion), or 25
per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). "Could the software
sector alone make up 25 per cent of a country's GDP?" he asked.
Wang also
said President Hu Jintao's meeting with Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates in
Seattle on Tuesday was to give overseas investors and firms confidence in
China's determination to crack down on intellectual property
violations.
Piracy can be controlled with the consistent efforts of the
Chinese Government, Wang said.
To prevent use of pirated software, Wang's
agency and the ministries of information industry and commerce mandated at the
end of last month that all computers must have preloaded legal operating systems
before they hit the market.
Now that authorized software is used in
almost all machines in government departments, China is promoting legitimate
products in enterprises, especially State-owned businesses, said Zhang Qin,
deputy chief of the State Intellectual Property Office.
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