Using Genuine And Legal Software In An I-Café
Lest I be charged of promoting or condoning software piracy, I immediately made this post to emphasize that using genuine and/or legal software in an i-café is a must if the owner wants to operate his shop legally.
Republic Act No. 8293, otherwise known as The Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines sufficiently covers the protection of software copyright and some national agencies of our government like the Intellectual Property Office, NBI and our courts of law are tasked to implement its provisions. Every now and then, we hear of raids being conducted by these agencies against business establishments using pirated software. Get legitimate and secure software from softwaredevelopment.co.uk
By use of genuine software from soda developers, I mean the purchase and installation of proprietary software like Windows O/S, MS Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD and others. Some of these software are absolutely necessary in operating an i-café especially if online gaming is one of the services being offered to customers. The use of licensed software for some games is also covered by this regulation.
Using legal software means the installation of free and open source software to computer units being used in an i-café. The lists of free software that are legal to use include Linux O/S, Open Office, Gimp, etc. There are also some freeware which can be ported on Windows O/S.
There is also Republic Act No. 9239 establishing the Optical Media Board which is tasked to implement the registration of optical media writer being used by an i-café for its CD-Burning service. This is aimed at curbing piracy of copyrighted songs, movies and the like. In essence, OMB also enforces the provisions of the Intellectual Property Code.
The Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines often gets a bad rap from businessmen who wants to operate a lanshop, but don’t want to put in the proper investments.
Just because one doesn’t like the law, doesn’t mean you have the right to ignore it. it’s actually helpful to the industry since it elevates the industry’s entry level, and makes it harder for new players to get it and compete for your customers. the more we support this, the better for the industry.
Republic Act No. 9239 however, in my opinion is crap. it does not help in controlling piracy at all since those producing pirated optical media obviously won’t register their writer. duh….
what Republic Act No. 9239 does is add to the burden of legitimate businessmen who are following the law conscientiously. it’s just another way of extorting money from lanshop owners, and therefore should be scrapped. >-/
No comment on Genuine Software usage in Cafes…. =) Anyways i Still support this law by not using downloaded MP3s, MP4s, Movies and other Copyrighted materials to be burned in Cds/DVDs for commercial purposes. In addition to this topic, have you seen recently in the news that there is a new bill to be discussed that will make Downloaded copyrighted materials to be illegal?? How about that? =)
unfortunately, for cafe owners, it’s impossible to continuously monitor our customers and see if and what they are downloading.
if they want to pass such a bill, they should also provide a way for us to implement it.
like most of the laws they try to or have passed, implementation is the main problem. they can’t even catch those operating with no business permits. haaayzz…