Despite an ongoing crackdown by both the government and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) on the use, sale and distribution of pirated software, the move has had very little or no impact at all on the corporate environment.
BSA vice president Huey Tan lamented that while they are trying to educate the public about the benefits of using legal software as well as the negative impact of software theft, there is still an unacceptably high incidence of illegal software usage in the corporate sector.
In fact, he said that a large number of companies continue to ignore BSA warnings.
According to BSA president Robert Holleyman II, piracy remains the biggest threat to the growth of the local software industry and its success as a whole.
Likewise, the high rate of software piracy in the country poses a significant effect to the economy, he added.
Software developers lost about P1.24 billion in revenues in 1998 due to rampant piracy.
"While the piracy rate in the Philippines has gone down from 92 percent to 77 percent over the last four years, copyright violation in the form of software piracy still poses a threat to a developing economy as it inflicts significant damage to the economy, particularly the future development of electronic commerce and the healthy growth of the Philippines software industry," he pointed out.
Thus, in an attempt to help companies break their "bad" software habits, BSA has provided a 90-day grace period to make it easier for firms to adopt better software management practices and promote greater understanding of copyright and gain greater respect and support for intellectual creations.
"We hope that the campaign will enable Filipinos to realize that intellectual property is an important as their own property. Legal software can be an important engine for economic growth and prosperity in the new millennium," he said.
Companies, Tan continued, merely have to complete the BSA declaration form, which is to prompt an audit of the computer system and make sure that the firm is not inadvertently using illegal software.
The aim of the form, he stressed, is to help organizations avoid possible prosecution. The law penalizes copyright violators with at least three-year imprisonment and a fine of P1.5 million.
"We want companies to understand that computer piracy is a serious issue and it is important to ensure that the computer software they are using are illegal," he said.
During the three-month period, Tan said that BSA will contact more than 10,000 companies across the Philippines from multinational corporations to small-and-medium-scale enterprises.
According to reports received by BSA, software piracy is most prevalent in the architectural, engineering, services, shipping and manufacturing business sectors although Tan said that there are also reports on a wide variety of other businesses as well.
BSA, together with the National Information Technology Council (NITC), will be extending support and assistance to companies that wish to legalize their software during the campaign.
Both BSA and the NITC envision that the campaign should substantially boost the growth of the information technology industry in the country as it underscores the need for corporations to audit their existing set-up with the end view of having them legitimize their software capabilities.
Companies during the campaign will also be properly educated on the harm pirated software will cause their respective organizations.