2007-12-20

Legitimate Software Usage Promotion Sees Progress

Chief of China's copyright watchdog says the promotion of legitimate software usage in the country has made remarkable progress. Liu Binjie, head of national copyright bureau says that this will also provide a sound policy environment for the healthy development of the Chinese software industry. Our reporter Zhao Jianfu has more.

Top copyright official Liu Binjie recounted that most local governments across China have achieved the goal of using legitimate software. Enterprises have also made significant progress in their use of legitimate software.

"Under the cooperation of governments at all levels and supervisors of various industries, about 1,500 big enterprises have stopped using counterfeit software. And more than 1,300 other companies have promised to say no to pirated software."

Since 2002, China has been promoting the use of legitimate software in all government departments. In 3 years, governments of central, provincial and municipal levels have fulfilled this goal. And the commitment is seen as a good example.

Early last year, the Chinese government further debuted the promotion of legitimate software in big enterprises. The National Copyright Bureau, Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Finance, along with other departments, organized a group of experts to guide the enterprises in the use of legitimate software under the cooperation of local governments and supervisor departments. Overall use has supervised some 3,600 companies to date.

Wang Ziqiang, with the National Copyright Bureau, said that the promoting is rarely replicated by other governments around the world.

"Using government and public sources to promote the usage of legitimate software, in other words, to protect intellectual property rights and copyright, is quite unusual in the world. It manifests the attitude and determination of the Chinese government to protect IPR."

In 2006, relevant departments released a regulation to ensure that all computers sold in China would make use of only legitimate operating systems. The Ministry of Information Industry and Public Security have been fighting against the usage of counterfeit software since then.

However, as Liu Binjie says, the cause of promoting legitimate software is a long and difficult one. The Chinese government has said it will spare no efforts in making greater progress in this regard.

Source: http://english.cri.cn/3130/2007/12/17/1481@305296.htm

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