Computer school slams NBI raid

MANILA, Philippines - AMA Computer College (AMACC) yesterday denounced the raid conducted by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA), on their Makati City South Super Highway branch last Tuesday that tried to pin them down for supposed computer software piracy.

The NBI-BSA entered the AMA Makati South Superhighway branch at around 10:30 a.m., and proceeded to their main computer laboratory, where the computers were checked for bearing the Adobe software.

AMA Makati administrators decided to suspend classes last Tuesday.

Lawyer Angel Enrico Mira, AMA Education System corporate secretary, said that the NBI raid to look for pirated software supposedly being used in the campus was a veiled “illegal marketing” assault with the NBI assisting the BSA in coercing the school to buy expensive software from the group.

Mira stressed that AMAES, including all the schools under its network, was compliant with all intellectual property laws relating to computer software licenses, and had licenses for all the software used in their schools and offices.

“That’s why we are one of the largest Microsoft licensees in the region,” Mira said.

“For Autocad, we have a network license that allows shared usage on a scheduled basis for all our AMA campuses offering the course,” Mira said.

“For Adobe, we are not utilizing this software yet,” Mira said.

In a press briefing, Mira explained that AMA currently uses free open-source design software alternatives to Adobe which makes purchasing the said software unnecessary. However, Mira added that AMA had plans to purchase it and was already talking to accredited suppliers before the raid of the NBI and BSA.