APU International School detected use of unlicenced software

May 04, 2012 | 11:15

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The Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism in cooperation with the Department for High-Tech Crime Protection conducted a raid and found APU International School in Ho Chi Minh City for severely violating the intellectual property rights law by running infringing Microsoft software.

This is the first raid conducted by Vietnamese authorities against commercial education organisations involving infringement of copyrighted computer programmes.

During the raid, inspectors discovered that multiple titles of software programmes were deployed at the two facilities of APU including Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2003, MTD2002, Adobe Photoshop CS 5 on the 52 computers housed at APU Education Development Company, and Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2003, MTD2002 on the 13 computers located at APU private primary school.

It could be seen that one of main reasons why Vietnam still has one of the highest software piracy rates in the world at over 80 per cent is the blatant disregard by IT users to the local law.

The awareness of intellectual property right (IPR) enforcement hasn’t been much heeded so far. In order to improve this situation, it’s high time for Vietnam to take strong actions in order to change that bad habit via media to further raise public awareness on IPR protection.

Hence, education organisations should be the pioneer in strictly implement IPR laws. Firmer regulations and enforcement would not only protect people from fake products, but would also foster a more vibrant and competitive development base in the country.

By Hoang Anh

vir.com.vn

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