[news] some interesting IT and software piracy news from VN

[AnHai Doan <anhai@cs.washington.edu>]

? Virtual Bookstore

Want to read the latest novel of your favorite author but have no
time to browse through the book shelves? There are two big
foreign-language bookstores in HCMC. One of them, the Viet-My
Bookstore on Le Duan Street has just put a Web page in VietNet's
Virtual Shopping Mall. According to VietNet's operator, you can
browse through the available titles - some 1,300 of them and order
your book just by clicking at the right icon. 

VietNet has previously offered the subscription service for Tuoi Tre
newspaper and Vietnam PC World magazine. 
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? Lethal promotion

A corporate client last week sent a promotional message to all users
of the VNMail network. This is a normal practice that Vietnamese
companies have been making use of recently. But unfortunately the
message and its attached file contains a macro virus named NTTHNTA.
When users open the file in Word 6, their normal template will be
infected with several macros that will allegedly kill all the COM.
EXE. and DOC. files on their hard disk after 20 times. 
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Can Vietnamese users afford it?

To Vietnamese end-users, computer software is something they have
taken for granted for so long. When they buy a computer set from
local dealers, their machine has got all the software they want. As
a promotion trick, computer dealers often ask their buyers to give
them a list of favorite software and install them free of charge.

According to the latest survey on the most popular software
conducted by PC World Vietnam, readers voted for Microsoft Office
including Microsoft Word, Excel, Access... Of course, all these run
under Windows environment.

The concept of software piracy rarely enters the mind of the
Vietnamese common user.

But legally speaking, the time will come when users can no longer
buy a "compilation CD-ROM" packed with all free software.
Intellectual copyright protection will force local dealers to think
twice before they throw some free software into their machine as a
bargain.

Microsoft has been actively trying to send this message across that
users cannot get away with free installations. Recently, Microsoft
invited local dealers to a seminar and convinced them that signing
software package contracts was the only way to go. Of course, the
deal will bring local dealers more profit as prices will go up to
accommodate software royalties, software technical support,
installation charge...

As if that was not enough, in April, Microsoft sent brochures to
Vietnamese companies in an effort to enhance the users' awareness on
computer piracy. Examples of businesses fined or jailed for using
illegal software in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore were
used extensively. Now even in Singapore, the piracy rate in this
technology-driven city-state has climbed to 59 percent in 1996 from
53 percent the previous year.

The question is whether the present purchasing power of Vietnamese
users allows them to buy computer software, however much they want
to abide by the law. Any comparison with users elsewhere is
irrelevant because just a simple word processing program will cost
an average Vietnamese his annual income.

Vietnamese software companies, also victims to software piracy, have
been following quite a different approach. They lower the price tags
of their software as much as possible, content with a smaller profit
margin but looking forward to bigger sales volume. The results are
encouraging. Most of Vietnamese popular software packages are bought
legally and many computer service centers are known to have refused
users' request for illegal copies.

Scitec is selling their Saigon News CD at VND140,000 (about US$12);
Cong Tam offers their well-researched Cota Lib database at
VND110,000 (less than US$10). Even Seatic has lowered their most
popular Vietnamese font system VietWare to VND175,000.

Microsoft and other big names in the software industry had better
lower their list prices for their software in Vietnam to make it
within the reach of the end-user. In this way, they can help fight
software piracy in Vietnam, help popularize computer use here and
get some benefit for themselves in the long run. 
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