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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.
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.
EVERYONE in China massively pirates all software.
Seriously, the company I work for has facilities in China and everything we don't specifically buy and install is pirated over there.
Why make the decision yourself?
Send an email to the directors just confirming this is what they wish to do and that they don't want you to take any action on this matter.
Then it's not really your problem anymore.
Passing the buck works both ways :)
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
You are better off suggesting Open Office and Free PDF software; rather than fighting piracy.
I used to work at a multi-national company; and I used to be amazed at the amount of self-imposed lock-ins created by IT staff in Western branches (I am based in India). Routine inter office correspondence happens using 'advanced' features in Exchange and Word which work only on the Windows platform. I always felt plain text and HTML suffices for any and all communication requirements.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's not like they're going to be caught and prosecuted. Although if possible, why not go for a FOSS solution? Personally I do tend to try to compensate people who write cool software that I use.
Ocassionally I get emails from Chinese users asking for a serial for one of our products. I asked one if there was not an accessible store from which to purchase it. He responded, basically, yeah, there's a couple, but no one buys software in China, they just download it. So there you have it!
Sadly we're not popular enough for anyone to have made a keygen that I can find.
Avoid being that douchebag who thinks he is better than everyone else
I'd say it's probably a bit late for that.
While the poster's motives might appear noble, I don't understand exactly what he's trying to achieve. A promotion, extra brownie points, getting someone in a foreign country fired, or at least severely embarrassed (and they set a lot of store on respect in Asia btw).
He's already approached the person responsible, and voiced his concerns. Just because said person didn't take the action he expected, instead of leaving it alone, he posts it on Slashdot for the world and his wife to comment on. And within a few days it'll be all indexed by Google for posterity.
To me he comes across as an anal retentive asshole who should be spending more time doing his job, rather than trying to shaft other people ... but that's just me, karma be damned.
That "it's someone else's problem" attitude utterly stinks. My guess is that the guy actually *cares* about the reputation of his company and takes pride in its work, which might be a novel concept to some people. Like it or not, software piracy is illegal; the fact that you have an axe to grind about Microsoft doesn't detract from that
I hate to say this, but you sound like a paid microsoft poster. Raids? In China? Have you ever been to China? Honestly. Please don't spread FUD. Trust me. I live here.
I would worry about trojans, spyware. These are legitimate concerns.
Another concern is that a lot of development in China takes place on very old slow machines. You want to do development here? Plan on using Microsoft VCC 6.0. Want to buy a copy? Forget it. Microsoft dropped that one about a decade ago. ( actually it is amazing how these kids get so much done working little on 17 inch monitors )
Iâve seen a lot people here using pirated software that is three generations old and no older available. But, it runs 10 times as fast as the new versions, and still seems slow on the old machines here.
Calm down, just a bit or two, there is no need to overreact.
For one thing, whether it is OK to copy software without the consent of the one who produced it is mostly a matter of taste or culture - unlike, say, murder or burglary. The whole idea of "intellectual property rights" is something that is very recent and has come into the world in the West; not to mention the whole idea of private property that underpins it, which one may be excused for thinking is alien to a Communist nation. All that aside, it has long been a part of Chinese culture and tradition to copy things - it is seen as a perfectly legitimate thing to do. You learn calligraphy or other arts by copying the masters, after all; so why not literature or software?
China is well known for using corporate (and other) espionage to further their political agenda.
Really? It isn't well-known to me, among others. You see, when you make a claim like that you need to be able to prove your case. Otherwise it merely ranks as "smug ignorance", on par with all the other prejudices - such as "all muslims are terrorists" or "Jews are money-grabbing misers".
Apart from that, you could substitute "England", "USA", "Israel" or just about any nation for China in that statement and get something equally justified. There is every reason to believe that all countries do this kind of things. Just to take one example: Isn't it true that we keep hearing about how American government agencies want to induce eg. Microsoft to install backdoors in their software? And is that not "espionage to further their political agenda"?
It is too lame to drone on with this sort of automatic demonizing of everybody you don't like or don't understand. The only two effects that is like ly to have is alienating your opponents and making you look stupid. Right now China is storming forward in the world and they are opening up; this is among many other things a great opportunity for the western governments to make friends and influence their policies on all the issues we criticize them for. And who knows, maybe some time in the future we will be glad that we have a friend in China.
If you steal from a grocery store, you deprive them of the groceries they paid for.
Pirating is more like buying from a different grocery store, or growing the food in your garden. That way you deprive them of the sale, but they still have the groceries to sell to someone else.