Legal software in Ukraine: Problems of the making Computer piracy in Ukraine is prosecuted
Date: October 15, 2003Source: Computer Crime Research Center
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... the Internet advertisement that follows a person who watched it; cell phones, which inform the authorities about every our step; road cabins fixing the number of every car that passes by; policemen in every airport who demand identification cards for traveling about the country. In general, we will live in the police state. The USA has just brought 100% tariffs on the Ukrainian products because the lawmakers had vo
ted against the creation of the US police state in Ukraine. Loud cheers to them! May be, they can borrow us some fighters for freedom who know how to get rid of the centralized oligarchic control over the markets, as well as authoritarian one over the press and citizens. Such people would come in handy to us.
Here is an opinion of some Ukrainian officials:
“It seems that the USA wanted to scare Ukraine because of the losses inflicted by the piracy instead of introducing trade sanctions against those states, which support the terrorism. Is Ukraine the largest manufacturer of piratical products in the world?”
“The most striking are stands of the functionaries claiming that bills are defeated by those persons who do not care about their own state. They say we should take the road of civilization and so on. I admit that it is bad to steal smb. else’s intellectual property. However, everybody forgets for some reason about what allowed Ukraine to get out of the information technology pit and enter into rivalry with other countries in the field of software development. To my mind, our programmers are not worse than American ones and are likely to excel them in something else. But what allow Ukraine to keep up with the world association are copies of Microsoft Windows, MS Office, Corel and Adobe. It was Microsoft Company that started using the Ukrainian language in its Windows and Office due to the wide popularity among the average Ukrainian users.”
The main reasons of the computer piracy are the imperfection of the normative-legal base; unfavorable conditions of the development of the information technology market; the society lacks for the negative attitude towards the illegal use of software; most people cannot purchase the legal software because of its high price.
The development of the information technologies in the country will be facilitated by the complex of measures taken for using only licensed software in all spheres of the activity for improving the legislation of the copyrights and contiguous rights to the use of software with regard for its specific character.
On May 15, 2002 Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers accepted the Concept of the software legalization and struggle against piratical products. It determines the main principles of the state policy in this direction. The software legalization aims at introducing an effective system of its legal protection as a copyright object. The Concept provides for taking steps connected with the improvement and development of the software market. It is not a secret that the foreign boss mainly employs the home programmers. The development of own software industry must become one of the more important preconditions for the civilized work of the information technology market in the country. The emergence of the home-produced software would favor not only the reduction of its price but also resolve a problem of the dependence on foreign manufactures.
For the time being the International Intellectual Property Protection Union insists on introducing the further sanctions against Ukraine in connection with the unsound condition of affaires in the field of the intellectual property protection. The Alliance accounts for its recommendations by the fact that the piracy problem in Ukraine remains very serious even after the adoption of the Joint Measure Plan signed by the former president of the USA Bill Clinton and the president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma three years ago. Ukraine’s copyright laws and the mechanism of taking legal actions for the infringement do not conform with the established norms of the World Trade Organization to the full extent. Ukraine must not be permitted to enter the WTO.
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