Two entertainment companies welcome the move to draft a new intellectual property law to increase the effectiveness of anti-piracy crackdowns, hoping that a half of the pirated products now available could disappear from the market.
The new law is expected to place legal responsibility on property owners who allow their tenants to sell counterfeited and pirated products. Many people support this idea but are not keen on a proposal that consumers could be fined 1,000 baht if they are found buying or using such goods.
Yongsak Ekprachyasakul, managing director of sales and marketing of GMM Grammy Plc, said that property owners who allow tenants to sell pirated products, or who know about the sales but simply ignore them, have been responsible for making the piracy problem as big as it is today.
When police raid some shopping areas and arrest some pirated product sellers,sales might just be suspended for a day or so, and after that it's business as usual."It will be better and more practical for the crackdown if the property owners co-operate with the police and copyright owners. They should not allow any pirated product to be sold in their stores and this must be mentioned in the lease,"Mr Yongsak said.
If tenants violate the contracts, they must have their leases terminated immediately. But if the property owners ignore piracy problems at their outlets,they must take legal responsibility and be fined.
"If counterfeit and pirated goods sellers don't have places to sell their products, the piracy problem will be solved by more than 50%," Mr Yongsak said.
He recalled that Grammy used to seek co-operation from many shopping malls where pirated products were sold but their landlords rarely co-operated.
"I can say that international retail chains such as Tesco Lotus are very concerned about this issue and are trying hard to solve it. They don't want any pirated product to be sold at their outlets," he added.
However, Mr Yongsak did not agree with the proposal to penalise consumers as many of them do not have proper knowledge and understanding about piracy.
"I would like the authorities to think carefully about the consumer issue as it's very sensitive. If some people get pirated DVDs or counterfeit bags from friends as a present, how can we penalise them?"
Sutthisak Prasatkarukarn, a director of Thai Copyright Collection Co, a subsidiary of RS Plc, also believes that the market for pirated and counterfeit products would be seriously hurt if the new law took effect - and was enforced.
"Buyers may think twice when they want to buy pirated goods on the street as they may be fined. Most of the pirated product sellers will face difficulty in doing business and up to 70% of them will disappear if they are not allowed to sell in many shopping places," he said.
Currently, piracy problems are getting bigger even though Thailand has had an IP law for a decade. It is widely known that the growing problem stems from poor law enforcement. It is estimated that pirated CDs or DVDs outnumber the genuine ones by four or five times in terms of sales in the Thai market.
"Pirated CDs or DVDs are very easy to produce at home or just in a small apartment. The investment cost is just for a computer and blank discs, while copyright owners like us have to spend a lot on many things from the artist,songwriter, and composer to marketing activities," Mr Sutthisak said.
Currently, only 38 factories nationwide are registered with the authorities as authorised CD producers.
An industry source said some pirated DVD producers were not afraid of violating law.
Some hire children or disabled people to sell their products because they know that these people will get off lightly when they are caught.
"This problem will never end as wrongdoers don't care because lowranking police are not serious about arresting them and the court will just give them a soft punishment," the source said.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
KARAOKE BUSINESS AND ROYALTY FEE COLLECTING AGENCIES
Since their introduction, karaoke machines have been popular among Thai consumers and part of the restaurant business throughout the country. But karaoke machines cannot operate without musical content, most of which is copyright-protected.
Widespread use of karaoke machines together with musical works hascertainly caught the attention of musical copyright owners. They started to enforce their rights by specifying the royalty rate and conducting police raids against those who use tunes without authorisation. It is important to note that using musical works without proper authorisation is a criminal offence carrying a jail term of up to four years or a fine of up to 800,000 baht (Section 69(2) Copyright Act).
For most small business owners, this fine is a huge figure. In 2002, a group of small restaurant owners with illegal karaoke operations surrounded a leading Thai musical company on Asok Road to protest the business concept in which musical companies would collect royalty fees for songs used by karaoke businesses.The restaurateurs later moved their protest to the Ministry of Commerce.
Since 2002, the Department of Intellectual Property (DIP), the Ministry of Commerce, and the police, among other agencies, have tried to resolve the conflict between restaurateurs and rights owners, but little progress has been achieved. Copyright owners want to collect royalty fees whenever their songs are played, whereas the karaoke operators believe fees are too high and that many musical companies collect fees outside of a properly regulated system.
Furthermore, there is no system in place to determine who the rightful owner of each song is. Some composers have transferred their copyright to more than one music publisher. The DIP has listed these "problem songs" and has asked the police not to prosecute the karaoke operators using these problematic songs.
This uncertainty calls for a law to regulate collecting agencies. In 2007,during Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont's administration, the ministry proposed to amend the Copyright Act to establish a collection agency that would administer a minimum number of songs,with royalty rates controlled by the DIP.The minimum songs requirement is to avoid too many small agencies, each owning only a few songs, collecting royalty fees. A lot of collecting agencies would impose too great a burden on karaoke operators. But the draft was shelved by the National Assembly because of protests against the agency's establishment in front of Parliament by a group believed to be connected to the musical right owners.
Government-facilitated meetings have continued since, but to no avail. In 2009,under Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government, the Ministry of Commerce has proposed new amendments of the Copyright Act for review by the Council of State, which serves as the government's legal adviser. While the amendments propose to make buying counterfeit products an offence, and to make landlords liable when tenants sell counterfeit products, a proposal for a royalty collection agency is not included.After two years of trying to pass its 2007 proposal, it seems the Ministry of Commerce has given up hope, at least in the short term.
Thailand is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia that leaves royalty fee collection to musical companies, who take the law into their own hands without any proper control from authorities.Other Asean countries have established collection agencies, including the Philippines' Filipino Society of Composers Authors and Publishers,Singapore's Recording Industry Performance Singapore, and Malaysia's three collection agencies.
The lack of royalty collecting systems in Thailand means karaoke machine operators continue to be pitted against copyright owners and their collection agencies. Therefore, it is important that there must be clear and manageable legal rules for the collecting of royalties in the karaoke business. The authorities need to come up with concrete solutions to solve this long-pending predicament.It is unlikely that this matter would come to an end soon unless concerted efforts are made by all parties concerned.
Widespread use of karaoke machines together with musical works hascertainly caught the attention of musical copyright owners. They started to enforce their rights by specifying the royalty rate and conducting police raids against those who use tunes without authorisation. It is important to note that using musical works without proper authorisation is a criminal offence carrying a jail term of up to four years or a fine of up to 800,000 baht (Section 69(2) Copyright Act).
For most small business owners, this fine is a huge figure. In 2002, a group of small restaurant owners with illegal karaoke operations surrounded a leading Thai musical company on Asok Road to protest the business concept in which musical companies would collect royalty fees for songs used by karaoke businesses.The restaurateurs later moved their protest to the Ministry of Commerce.
Since 2002, the Department of Intellectual Property (DIP), the Ministry of Commerce, and the police, among other agencies, have tried to resolve the conflict between restaurateurs and rights owners, but little progress has been achieved. Copyright owners want to collect royalty fees whenever their songs are played, whereas the karaoke operators believe fees are too high and that many musical companies collect fees outside of a properly regulated system.
Furthermore, there is no system in place to determine who the rightful owner of each song is. Some composers have transferred their copyright to more than one music publisher. The DIP has listed these "problem songs" and has asked the police not to prosecute the karaoke operators using these problematic songs.
This uncertainty calls for a law to regulate collecting agencies. In 2007,during Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont's administration, the ministry proposed to amend the Copyright Act to establish a collection agency that would administer a minimum number of songs,with royalty rates controlled by the DIP.The minimum songs requirement is to avoid too many small agencies, each owning only a few songs, collecting royalty fees. A lot of collecting agencies would impose too great a burden on karaoke operators. But the draft was shelved by the National Assembly because of protests against the agency's establishment in front of Parliament by a group believed to be connected to the musical right owners.
Government-facilitated meetings have continued since, but to no avail. In 2009,under Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government, the Ministry of Commerce has proposed new amendments of the Copyright Act for review by the Council of State, which serves as the government's legal adviser. While the amendments propose to make buying counterfeit products an offence, and to make landlords liable when tenants sell counterfeit products, a proposal for a royalty collection agency is not included.After two years of trying to pass its 2007 proposal, it seems the Ministry of Commerce has given up hope, at least in the short term.
Thailand is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia that leaves royalty fee collection to musical companies, who take the law into their own hands without any proper control from authorities.Other Asean countries have established collection agencies, including the Philippines' Filipino Society of Composers Authors and Publishers,Singapore's Recording Industry Performance Singapore, and Malaysia's three collection agencies.
The lack of royalty collecting systems in Thailand means karaoke machine operators continue to be pitted against copyright owners and their collection agencies. Therefore, it is important that there must be clear and manageable legal rules for the collecting of royalties in the karaoke business. The authorities need to come up with concrete solutions to solve this long-pending predicament.It is unlikely that this matter would come to an end soon unless concerted efforts are made by all parties concerned.
Worth a thousand words
If you ever scan a book or magazine page, you'll find that the result is a picture of the page, not words you can edit. To make that picture a set of words that can edited and searched,you need an Optical Character Recognition program (OCR), such as OmniPage, Abbyy FineReader or Iris.
We just got a look at the new OmniPage Pro from Nuance, which is just out in version 17. It has some features that might make the $500(16,778 baht) sticker price easier to take. The Mac version is called OmniPage Pro X.
The new version lets you upload multiple files much faster than previously and automatically adds clickable OCR commands to your Microsoft Office programs. It now recognises Chinese,Japanese and Korean. You can put a document on your scanner and a few seconds later have it sent to your Microsoft Sharepoint network in any format you want. It comes packaged with ScanSoft's PaperPort 11 and Nuance's own PDF maker. PaperPort is a marvellous way to quickly and easily organise anything that is scanned into the computer.
The new OmniPage 17 can also convert scanned PDFs into the proprietary format used by Amazon's electronic book reader,Kindle and send them to the Kindle in one step.(If you have the new and larger Kindle DX, you can read PDFs without converting them.)
Speaking of the Kindle, you can email PDFs to your Kindle without converting them but Amazon will charge you for this. To avoid the fee, email them to yourself at "name@free.kindle.com"where "name" is the name given to you as part of a special email address when you register your Kindle. If you're not sure what yours is, click on "Account" at Amazon and look at the Kindle section.
Thwarting counterfeiters
It's estimated that 10 percent of the prescription drugs sold worldwide are fakes.
But if you could embed a tiny maker's tag in each pill, it could be checked for authenticity. In fact, at least one company has already done it. A company called Cellular Bioengineering has just come out with an edible micro-tag called a "TruTag."
The TruTag is made from a porous silicon wafer that has been etched with identifying codes chosen from over a trillion possibilities. Unlike the RFID (radio frequency) tags that have come into common today, TruTags can be broken into pieces, or heated to 1,000 degrees and still retain their information.Even after being broken apart, each piece still contains all of its encoded information, much like a hologram.
The technology has obvious applications beyond differentiating real pharmaceuticals from fake. Many products are counterfeited, from clothes to mechanical parts that could cause critical failure in some situations. More info at TruTags.com.
Bing goes Cha Ching!
If you buy things through Microsoft's Bing.com search engine, you can get up to 50 percent cash back on some items,like flowers and shoes.
There are other sites that do this,such as ebates.com, but Microsoft is the only site that gives all of their sales commission back to the purchaser. We like Bing.com for other reasons, and one of them is the beautiful pictures that are changed every day.
Washable keyboard and mouse
The yuck factor in college dorms is pretty high these days. What with swine flu and other contagious diseases, you might want to give your college-bound child a washable computer keyboard.Joy took one look at all the crud that had accumulated in her current Hewlett Packard keyboard and decided she wanted a washable one.
The new "SpillSeal" keyboard from Unotron has sealed casings that prevent food, drink or dust and dirt from entering the keyboard where they can't be flushed out. The company says you should either immerse the keyboard or mouse in a hospital-grade antibacterial solution or run tap water over it. We just use vinegar from the grocery store.
Joy finds that she doesn't type quite as fast on this keyboard as she did on her HP,(the keys are a bit stiff) but the cleanliness makes it worthwhile. Bob would rather just cover his keyboard with a cloth when he's not using it.Unotron sells a corded version for $46 (1,543 baht) and a wireless version for $80(2,684 baht), the mouse runs from $50 to $60(1,677-2,013 baht). You can see a YouTube demo video at tinyurl.com/washkey. More info at unotrononline.com.
If you have a Macbook, iPhone or Blackberry, you might want to check out iskin.com, which sells colourful silicon "skins" for your gadgets.
Internuts
switchgames.com is a new online trading site (US only) for swapping video games. You pay $6(600 baht) if your offer is accepted and you get a postagepaid shipping label.
schmap.com/picks tells you what restaurants and bars are being recommended by Twitter users. It covers 11 US cities plus London and Sydney.The San Diego suggestions don't mesh with those of our man on the ground.Bob used to think the Old Town Mexican restaurant in San Diego's Old Town area was the best restaurant in the world.But our man in San Diego says it has really gone downhill. Other twitters say it's still tops.
A virtual boomand bust
If you think the current economic crisis is bad, wait till you've experienced it in the virtual world.
According to a study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg Communications School, economic fluctuations are far more dramatic in online games than they are in the real world.
Looking at the role-playing game Everquest, researchers discovered that inflation rose more than 50 percent in a five-month period. Such trends can be calculated because players in many online games can buy and sell items and powers.
We just got a look at the new OmniPage Pro from Nuance, which is just out in version 17. It has some features that might make the $500(16,778 baht) sticker price easier to take. The Mac version is called OmniPage Pro X.
The new version lets you upload multiple files much faster than previously and automatically adds clickable OCR commands to your Microsoft Office programs. It now recognises Chinese,Japanese and Korean. You can put a document on your scanner and a few seconds later have it sent to your Microsoft Sharepoint network in any format you want. It comes packaged with ScanSoft's PaperPort 11 and Nuance's own PDF maker. PaperPort is a marvellous way to quickly and easily organise anything that is scanned into the computer.
The new OmniPage 17 can also convert scanned PDFs into the proprietary format used by Amazon's electronic book reader,Kindle and send them to the Kindle in one step.(If you have the new and larger Kindle DX, you can read PDFs without converting them.)
Speaking of the Kindle, you can email PDFs to your Kindle without converting them but Amazon will charge you for this. To avoid the fee, email them to yourself at "name@free.kindle.com"where "name" is the name given to you as part of a special email address when you register your Kindle. If you're not sure what yours is, click on "Account" at Amazon and look at the Kindle section.
Thwarting counterfeiters
It's estimated that 10 percent of the prescription drugs sold worldwide are fakes.
But if you could embed a tiny maker's tag in each pill, it could be checked for authenticity. In fact, at least one company has already done it. A company called Cellular Bioengineering has just come out with an edible micro-tag called a "TruTag."
The TruTag is made from a porous silicon wafer that has been etched with identifying codes chosen from over a trillion possibilities. Unlike the RFID (radio frequency) tags that have come into common today, TruTags can be broken into pieces, or heated to 1,000 degrees and still retain their information.Even after being broken apart, each piece still contains all of its encoded information, much like a hologram.
The technology has obvious applications beyond differentiating real pharmaceuticals from fake. Many products are counterfeited, from clothes to mechanical parts that could cause critical failure in some situations. More info at TruTags.com.
Bing goes Cha Ching!
If you buy things through Microsoft's Bing.com search engine, you can get up to 50 percent cash back on some items,like flowers and shoes.
There are other sites that do this,such as ebates.com, but Microsoft is the only site that gives all of their sales commission back to the purchaser. We like Bing.com for other reasons, and one of them is the beautiful pictures that are changed every day.
Washable keyboard and mouse
The yuck factor in college dorms is pretty high these days. What with swine flu and other contagious diseases, you might want to give your college-bound child a washable computer keyboard.Joy took one look at all the crud that had accumulated in her current Hewlett Packard keyboard and decided she wanted a washable one.
The new "SpillSeal" keyboard from Unotron has sealed casings that prevent food, drink or dust and dirt from entering the keyboard where they can't be flushed out. The company says you should either immerse the keyboard or mouse in a hospital-grade antibacterial solution or run tap water over it. We just use vinegar from the grocery store.
Joy finds that she doesn't type quite as fast on this keyboard as she did on her HP,(the keys are a bit stiff) but the cleanliness makes it worthwhile. Bob would rather just cover his keyboard with a cloth when he's not using it.Unotron sells a corded version for $46 (1,543 baht) and a wireless version for $80(2,684 baht), the mouse runs from $50 to $60(1,677-2,013 baht). You can see a YouTube demo video at tinyurl.com/washkey. More info at unotrononline.com.
If you have a Macbook, iPhone or Blackberry, you might want to check out iskin.com, which sells colourful silicon "skins" for your gadgets.
Internuts
switchgames.com is a new online trading site (US only) for swapping video games. You pay $6(600 baht) if your offer is accepted and you get a postagepaid shipping label.
schmap.com/picks tells you what restaurants and bars are being recommended by Twitter users. It covers 11 US cities plus London and Sydney.The San Diego suggestions don't mesh with those of our man on the ground.Bob used to think the Old Town Mexican restaurant in San Diego's Old Town area was the best restaurant in the world.But our man in San Diego says it has really gone downhill. Other twitters say it's still tops.
A virtual boomand bust
If you think the current economic crisis is bad, wait till you've experienced it in the virtual world.
According to a study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg Communications School, economic fluctuations are far more dramatic in online games than they are in the real world.
Looking at the role-playing game Everquest, researchers discovered that inflation rose more than 50 percent in a five-month period. Such trends can be calculated because players in many online games can buy and sell items and powers.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Experts criticise Copyright Act
Law experts object to the idea of penalising buyers of illegal copyright products to solve piracy, pointing out that no other country has a similar law. Meanwhile, the commerce ministry will find ways to fill loopholes in the Copyright Act after the cabinet added the specific clause for landlord liability earlier this month.
Dhiraphol Suwanprateep, a partner at Baker & Mckenzie Global Services,strongly disagrees with the government's proposed Copyright Act which will set a fine for buyers and processors of counterfeit goods, including computer software, music and movies, because it may open opportunities for abuse of power as well as create problems in enforcing the law.
Dhiraphol said that no countries have such a law. Even France and Italy have laws for consumers who use illegal trademarked products but these are covered by customs legislation. Furthermore, Thai customs law already has authority to enforce the import or export of illegal copyrighted and trademarked products.
Landlord-liability will help to solve the piracy problem because under the rental contract the owners have the right to revoke contracts if the rental merchant sells illegal products. But there still lots of illegal copyright products sold in many areas.
Paiboon Amonpinyokeat, managing partner at P & P Law Firm and Special Lecturer of Internet Law at Chulalongkorn University, also observed that there are rarely any such laws which penalise buyers of illegal products - even in EU states and the US which dominate in IT, or in Asian nations like Japan,Korea and China which are strong in entertainment.
If there is buyer penalty it will conflict with fair use in copyright law that allows individual use by private users without affecting the copyright holders. Fair use is one way to allow users to make reverse engineering or apply creativity.If the law is too strict it will lead to a monopoly.
The data traffic provider liability in the draft is also too broad because it means every piece of data that is sent by using illegal software will come under this law but in reality the data is sent by the computer or other device.
"I think the government intends to tackle Internet service providers or web hosting that has Bittorrent or other file sharing program so the government should apply the Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems that cover using technological measures that effectively protects the right of a copyright owner," Paiboon said.
Pajchima Tanasanti, deputy director general of the Department of Intellectual Property under the commerce ministry, said after cabinet rejected the draft Trademark Act and Copyright Act which sets out the liability and penalty for buyers and landlords related to illegal products, the minister will add ministerial regulations aligned with the draft amendment of the Copyright Act to specified targeted zones like Pantip Plaza or computer centres.
This will help to solve concerns in the draft legislation that commercialbuilding owners and landlords would face fines ranging from 30,000 baht to 300,000 baht which was criticised because it may affect government agencies liability which is open for small individuals to rent space in the open market and they may sell illegal copyrighted products.
Moreover, in the part that mentions data traffic provider which should have liability and be penalised if they know or acknowledge any violation of copyright or duplicate original copyright under their services.
"We intend to cover Internet service providers but we have to consider data traffic which is too broad," said Pajchima.
Meanwhile Varunee Ratchatapattanakul Consultant, Thailand Committee at Business Software Allaiance (BSA),said that the BSA appreciates the government's attempts to amend the present copyright act to expand the scope of copyright protection and their efforts to ensure that the copyright act, as amended, will be practically and effectively enforced to result in justice for every party concerned.
It is also important to note that the copyright act, as amended, would have the potential to enhance consumer protection from the sales of fraudulent products.
Rebecca Ho, Microsoft spokesperson for intellectual property enforcement in Thailand, said as a company at the forefront of ICT innovation and one of the world's largest investors in innovation, Microsoft supported the continued reform and enforcement of intellectual property laws.
"Piracy is not just an issue for foreign innovators and creators but also for the burgeoning Thai film and software industries," Ho said
"We are encouraged by the continued enforcement of existing laws and the reform of legislation for stronger penalties against violators. These efforts will help the country's drive to develop a 'creative economy'."
Wisanu Wangwisut, managing director of the IT computer centre at Thippatana Arcade which operates Pantip Plaza computer centre, said if the government specifically restrict zones or special zone in landlordliability this way will not result in fair treatment.
Dhiraphol Suwanprateep, a partner at Baker & Mckenzie Global Services,strongly disagrees with the government's proposed Copyright Act which will set a fine for buyers and processors of counterfeit goods, including computer software, music and movies, because it may open opportunities for abuse of power as well as create problems in enforcing the law.
Dhiraphol said that no countries have such a law. Even France and Italy have laws for consumers who use illegal trademarked products but these are covered by customs legislation. Furthermore, Thai customs law already has authority to enforce the import or export of illegal copyrighted and trademarked products.
Landlord-liability will help to solve the piracy problem because under the rental contract the owners have the right to revoke contracts if the rental merchant sells illegal products. But there still lots of illegal copyright products sold in many areas.
Paiboon Amonpinyokeat, managing partner at P & P Law Firm and Special Lecturer of Internet Law at Chulalongkorn University, also observed that there are rarely any such laws which penalise buyers of illegal products - even in EU states and the US which dominate in IT, or in Asian nations like Japan,Korea and China which are strong in entertainment.
If there is buyer penalty it will conflict with fair use in copyright law that allows individual use by private users without affecting the copyright holders. Fair use is one way to allow users to make reverse engineering or apply creativity.If the law is too strict it will lead to a monopoly.
The data traffic provider liability in the draft is also too broad because it means every piece of data that is sent by using illegal software will come under this law but in reality the data is sent by the computer or other device.
"I think the government intends to tackle Internet service providers or web hosting that has Bittorrent or other file sharing program so the government should apply the Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems that cover using technological measures that effectively protects the right of a copyright owner," Paiboon said.
Pajchima Tanasanti, deputy director general of the Department of Intellectual Property under the commerce ministry, said after cabinet rejected the draft Trademark Act and Copyright Act which sets out the liability and penalty for buyers and landlords related to illegal products, the minister will add ministerial regulations aligned with the draft amendment of the Copyright Act to specified targeted zones like Pantip Plaza or computer centres.
This will help to solve concerns in the draft legislation that commercialbuilding owners and landlords would face fines ranging from 30,000 baht to 300,000 baht which was criticised because it may affect government agencies liability which is open for small individuals to rent space in the open market and they may sell illegal copyrighted products.
Moreover, in the part that mentions data traffic provider which should have liability and be penalised if they know or acknowledge any violation of copyright or duplicate original copyright under their services.
"We intend to cover Internet service providers but we have to consider data traffic which is too broad," said Pajchima.
Meanwhile Varunee Ratchatapattanakul Consultant, Thailand Committee at Business Software Allaiance (BSA),said that the BSA appreciates the government's attempts to amend the present copyright act to expand the scope of copyright protection and their efforts to ensure that the copyright act, as amended, will be practically and effectively enforced to result in justice for every party concerned.
It is also important to note that the copyright act, as amended, would have the potential to enhance consumer protection from the sales of fraudulent products.
Rebecca Ho, Microsoft spokesperson for intellectual property enforcement in Thailand, said as a company at the forefront of ICT innovation and one of the world's largest investors in innovation, Microsoft supported the continued reform and enforcement of intellectual property laws.
"Piracy is not just an issue for foreign innovators and creators but also for the burgeoning Thai film and software industries," Ho said
"We are encouraged by the continued enforcement of existing laws and the reform of legislation for stronger penalties against violators. These efforts will help the country's drive to develop a 'creative economy'."
Wisanu Wangwisut, managing director of the IT computer centre at Thippatana Arcade which operates Pantip Plaza computer centre, said if the government specifically restrict zones or special zone in landlordliability this way will not result in fair treatment.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Clampdown on illegal software use
At least 1,000 companies are being monitored for potential software copyright infringement by the Thai police in a nationwide drive to reduce license violations by corporate end-users.
Officers from the Economic and Cyber Crime Division said the 1,000 investigations are being conducted based on information suggesting companies have violated the Thai Copyright Act. This information has come from a collection of tips, some anonymous, typically from sources within the targeted companies.
Leads are also being shared by the Business Software Alliance, which runs a toll-free hotline number and a website for informants to report the use of pirated and unlicensed software in businesses.Other software developers also provide police officials with leads and tips about potential offenders.
Police then review and verify any evidence received. If they believe they have a case, police officials then obtain search warrants and conduct raids of company premises.
"Business organisations will have to ensure that they are compliant with the Thai Copyright Act," said Police Colonel Sarayuth Pooltanya, deputy commander of the Economic and Cyber Crime Divi-sion (ECD).
"On October 26 we will begin raiding companies based on our information about software piracy taking place."
August marked one of the ECD's most successful months, with 15 raids netting 54.5 million baht worth of bootleg software. Raided companies came from a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, real estate, automotive,shipping, design and engineering.
Officers from the Economic and Cyber Crime Division said the 1,000 investigations are being conducted based on information suggesting companies have violated the Thai Copyright Act. This information has come from a collection of tips, some anonymous, typically from sources within the targeted companies.
Leads are also being shared by the Business Software Alliance, which runs a toll-free hotline number and a website for informants to report the use of pirated and unlicensed software in businesses.Other software developers also provide police officials with leads and tips about potential offenders.
Police then review and verify any evidence received. If they believe they have a case, police officials then obtain search warrants and conduct raids of company premises.
"Business organisations will have to ensure that they are compliant with the Thai Copyright Act," said Police Colonel Sarayuth Pooltanya, deputy commander of the Economic and Cyber Crime Divi-sion (ECD).
"On October 26 we will begin raiding companies based on our information about software piracy taking place."
August marked one of the ECD's most successful months, with 15 raids netting 54.5 million baht worth of bootleg software. Raided companies came from a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, real estate, automotive,shipping, design and engineering.
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