Chinese Authorities Forced to Use Authorized Software

[Guest Black-Widow]

In frames of country-wide copyright crackdown, the Chinese government departments will have to switch to licensed software. Since June, all government agencies across the country will be forced to only use authorized and copyrighted software in their work. The new legislation, which is targeted at all provincial level governments, is being introduced in order to crackdown on the use of piracy and counterfeit digital products.

According to Wang Zhicheng, deputy director of copyright department of the General Administration of Press and Publication, all the computers of prefecture and county-level authorities would be installed with copyrighted software by the end of next year. During the interview, he explained that since May 2011, the copyrighted software had already been installed in central government agencies.

Starting this June, the legislation will also force all government departments to purchase computers with pre-installed authorized operating systems. In addition, the government bodies will be provided with a set amount of money to purchase legal software. Thus far, the amount of money the country’s authorities have spent on this is about $168 million.

In order to make sure they hammer the message, local authorities have also been ordered to expand their efforts to promote the use of legal software in the agencies. Global copyright crackdown is claimed to have positive effect – according to the statistics cited in the Chinese press, within last four months, over 15,000 local companies have installed legit software on their corporate computers.