Hunt for illegal software

BSA will initiate contact with the corporate leaders of 10,000 companies to facilitate their shift to legal software use, while OMB will be enforcing Philippine laws.

The government, via anti-piracy Optical Media Board (OMB), is teaming up with Washington-based global software advocate Business Software Alliance (BSA) in a bid to halt the possible illegal use of software by 10,000 identified Philippine companies.

OMB and BSA launched on Monday its campaign Clean Up to the Countdown urging the top officials of local companies to legalize their software assets in their respective workplaces by the end of the year.

Under the campaign, BSA will initiate contact with the corporate leaders of 10,000 companies to facilitate their shift to legal software use, while OMB will be enforcing Philippine laws.

BSA senior director Tarun Sawney said BSA conducted profile checks across companies in the industries of manufacturing, construction, banking and finance, engineering, architecture, media, design, information technology and healthcare to identify which ones are more at-risk of using unlicensed software.

“BSA wants to help CEO do the right thing, but this requires that CEO take a hands-on and proactive approach to addressing the risk using illegal software in business operations. Our advice is that CEO treat the risk of illegal software with the utmost importance. CEO can and should control this risk factor,” Sawney said.

Citing BSA’s Global Software Survey for the year 2017, he said about 64 percent of Philippine companies use illegal software. The figure is more than the regional average of 57 percent and global average of 37 percent, translating to higher vulnerability to malware that could compromise the firms’ data privacy.

For the 10,000 companies, BSA is targeting a conversion rate of 50 percent. But while this alone may prove a hard task, the OMB for its part said enforcement will be harder considering constraints faced by the agency.

“We only have 27 field agents in the office, and we have a very large area to work with on a regular schedule, and this is just one of the challenges that we’re facing apart from the limited budget that we receive from the national government. And software regulation is a third of what we actually (look) out for, apart from movies, music,” OMB chairman and chief executive officer Anselmo B. Adriano, a lawyer, said in a briefing in Manila on 28 October.

“But it does not necessarily mean we are stopping at where we are right now. We’re continuing our operations; we are doing what we could under the circumstances,” Adriano said.

He added that they have so far inspected 40 internet cafes and two “large” construction firms violating Republic Act 9239, or the Optical Media Act of 2003 ensuring the protection and promotion of intellectual property rights by regulating the manufacture, mastering, replication, importation and exportation of optical media.