Vietnam fines South Korean Daewoo's affiliate for software piracy
Authorities in Vietnam have fined an affiliate of South Korea's Daewoo Corp. for using pirated software, the first time a corporate user of illegal software has been targeted in the Southeast Asian country, officials said Wednesday.
Police and inspectors from the Ministry of Culture and Information raided the Hanoi-based Daewoo Hanel Electronic Corp., last week and discovered all the software installed in their computers was pirated, said Vu Xuan Thanh, the ministry's chief inspector.
The illegal software included copies of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Auto CAD, Thanh said.
The company, a joint venture between South Korea's Daewoo Corp., and Hanel, a local company, was ordered to pay a fine of 15 million dong ($940), he said.
"This serves as warning to other companies that they should seriously abide by the copyrights rules as Vietnam is poised to join the World Trade organisation," he said.
Vietnam is hoping to join the WTO before the end of the year, and it has agreed to crack down on piracy as a condition of joining.
An executive at the Daewoo Hanel who identified himself only as Tam said the company had no idea that the software was pirated before the raid.
"The software was already installed on the computers when we bought them," he said. "We had no idea whether it was real or pirated."
The company will replace the illegal software with properly copyrighted software within the next week, Tam said.
Vietnam has one of the world's highest rate of software piracy of some 90 percent, according to the Business Software Alliance. A version of Microsoft Windows can be bought as cheap as 50 cents.
The Associated Press - October 12, 2006.
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