Software Piracy At the Beijing Branch Office?

spirit_fingers writes "I'm the IT manager for a west coast design company that has a small branch office in Beijing with 5 employees, a few workstations and a couple of servers. Recently, it came to my attention that the Beijing office has been routinely installing and using pirated software on their computers — MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite, mostly. We're very buttoned up about being legal with our software here at the home office, and I consider it unprofessional and risky for our Beijing office to be engaging in this practice. When I called the local office manager on this, he shrugged and replied, 'Well, every other shop here does it.' So I was wondering if there are any IT manager Slashdotters here in the the US who may have experienced something similar with their colleagues in APAC, and how they handle a situation like this." Click the link for more of this reader's thoughts on the subject.
Up until now, the powers that be here in the States have had a relatively laissez faire attitude about what goes on at the Beijing office and our accounting department hadn't noticed that Beijing never submitted receipts for software, until I questioned them about it.

I have no doubt that "everyone else does it" in that environment. Frankly, I could care less what those guys do with their personal computers, but when it comes to company-owned gear my attitude is to stay legal no matter what anyone else is doing. And it's not like they need to do it to save money: the Beijing branch turns a tidy profit. It just seems to be an attitude so firmly ingrained in the culture over there that no one gives it a second thought.

My response (CC'd to our CFO) was to ask for copies of all receipts and serial numbers for the software they're using. and see what happens. This came down today, so I'll give them a day or two to come up with something.

Comments

Ya know what else you should ask for?

[QuantumG]

Receipts for snow shovels from your Australia office. Never mind that it doesn't snow there. They *have* to be buying snow shovels or stealing them, or something.

Corporate dick.

Re:Ya know what else you should ask for?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Receipts for snow shovels from your Australia office. Never mind that it doesn't snow there.

So, what, they don't write software in China? Or you're arguing that since they probably won't be caught or punished, they should do whatever they want?

Re:Ya know what else you should ask for?

[QuantumG]

I'm saying it's a completely irrelevant concern. And you *know* that is what I'm saying.

spongE

[Anonymous Coward]

to t4is. For mechanics. So I'm = 36440 FreeBSD Has brought upon

Re:He's Right

[horza]

Actually I've found that often the pirates provide a much better service than the original manufacturer. When reinstalling Windows on friend's machines I try and use a cracked version where available. They tend to contain all the latest security patches. Otherwise with an original install CD the machine is compromised before I can even download SP1. The pirate version also gives you a nice choice of themes, and one click install of useful software.

Actually all that is past tense now as I refuse to touch Windows, even for friends and family. Too much of a drain on my life. They either use Ubuntu or fix their own problems.

Phillip.

Re:He's Right

[LingNoi]

So please explain why something like half the worlds spam comes from China?