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November 15, 1999 Web posted at: 9:14 a.m. EST (1414 GMT) by David Legard

From...

SINGAPORE (IDG) -- Software pirates in Vietnam are threatening the livelihood of home-grown software firms as they target packages written for the local market as well as popular international packages such as Windows 2000, the country's Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) said in a report.

Now, local technology companies are accusing each other of piracy, while overseas software vendors have been scared away from the sector altogether, the report stated.

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The report quoted Nguyen Van Nghia, director of the well-known Lac Viet software house as accusing government-owned Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT) of piracy.

"Even FPT, a powerful State-run company under the management of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment is illegally installing our products onto PCs, and then selling them on the market," Nghia was quoted as saying.

Lac Viet sells an interactive English-Vietnamese dictionary and says that sales, at an estimated 3,000 copies, are unrealistically low given that 700,000 PCs are in use in the country and that there is a strong need for translation software.

Vietnam is notorious for its high level of software piracy. The Business Software Alliance anti-piracy group estimates current piracy levels in Vietnam at 99 percent -- for each package bought legally, 100 copies are made.

Apart from the damage to the fledgling software industry, Vietnam risks being cut off from technology developments if the piracy issue is not addressed, the report quoted Do Khac Chien, deputy director of the Department of Intellectual Property Rights as saying.

"Now is the time for the government to shake up the IT sector by taking on intellectual rights infringements," the report quoted Chien as saying. "If the violations continue to prevail like at present, Vietnam will lose its chance to access high value software products because international IT firms will not bring them in."

David Legard is Singapore correspondent for the IDG News Service.