VietNamNet Bridge – The software piracy rate in Vietnam is projected to decline from 81% to 70% in the next five years and to 60% five years later, according to the U.S.-based Business Software Alliance (BSA).

Tarun Sawney, senior director of BSA in Asia-Pacific, informed that the software piracy rate of Vietnam fell two percentage points annually which is the reason why he is quite confident of the predicted figure.

With the current rate of 81% in terms of software copyright violations, Vietnam is now a nation with a high violation rate compared to the average level of 60% in other Asian countries. However, Sawney in a recent talk with the Daily evaluated Vietnam as one of the five nations having the sharpest fall in software piracy globally.

Statistics from BSA indicates that the software piracy rate in Vietnam was 92% in 2004 but it has fallen to 81% at present. According to Sawney, his association would support the Vietnamese Government in planning and implementing legal regulations besides providing assistance in training and media.

BSA has recently introduced the latest version of the web portal verafirm.com in Vietnam to help local firms manage their software assets through online services.

Companies registering information with the website will be verified by Verafirm as a kind of certificate proving they conform to intellectual property rights and business morality.

Inspection teams of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in this year’s January-August had inspected 64 companies and checked 3,958 computers, BSA reports.

Many of these enterprises were found using illegal software, with the commercial value of such software worth some VND11 billion or US$537,000. These violators therefore were fined nearly VND1.3 billion.

Six inspections carried out last month show all checked firms committed violations, Sawney said. Notably, numerous violators are foreign-invested companies in leather-footwear, software programming and industrial construction industries among others, he stated.

Overall, the commercial value of pirate software in Vietnam is up to over US$300 million, according to BSA.

Source: SGT