By Aaron Tan
Thursday, August 04 2005 07:25 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39247168,00.htm

SINGAPORE--Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in Singapore are aware of the new copyright laws which were in place since January this year, but more needs to be done to encourage them to stay legit, industry experts say.

"Being a fairly obedient society, Singapore businesses understand what they need to do to comply with the new law and avoid the penalties for infringement," said Stephen Lim, chairman of the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF). Lim was speaking today at a media roundtable organized by the Business Software Alliance, which also included participants from the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, systems integrator NCS and consulting firm Deloitte and Touche.

Under Singapore's Copyright Act, it is a criminal offence for a person or company to obtain a commercial advantage from unlicensed or pirated software. Offenders face a fine of up to S$20,000 (US$12,250) and six months in jail.

Larger enterprises in Singapore have already made efforts to comply with the new laws by putting in tools, or software asset management (SAM), to monitor software products and usage in their corporate environment, Lim said.

But SMBs that are aware they may be breaching intellectual property rights, assume they can "get away with it if they claim ignorance", he said. Many do not place compliance as a top business priority, he added.

They tend to delay compliance "until someone knocks on the door", Lim explained, as software companies will generally give infringers time to acquire legitimate software.

However, procrastination among SMBs can be blamed on confusing software licenses--many of which are filled with complicated legalese that is hard to understand, he said.

"The (software) licensing mechanism in the market lacks standards," he explained. "The definition of user licenses is also unclear in many occasions. Even licenses from a single software vendor vary according to product categories."

"For example, when you sell a single-user license, does it apply to software user or the machine on which the software is installed? If the user has two machines, does he require one or two licenses, although he may be working on only a single machine at any one time?"

Such usage restrictions are not always clearly spelt out, and as a result, can confuse users, Lim said. "Of course, confusion is not an excuse for not complying with copyright laws," he added.

Jeffrey Hardee, Asia-Pacific vice president and regional director of Business Software Alliance, acknowledged that software licensing is complicated but stressed it is difficult to achieve uniformity in licensing procedures among thousands of software companies.

"I think licensing will continue to be determined by software companies, but they do have the responsibility to make sure their customers understand their licensing requirements," he said.

Strong intellectual property protection enables business to nurture innovation and provide value-added services, Hardee said.

Lim, however, noted that many SMBs do not typically benefit from such protection since there is a lack of innovation among local IT companies.

Neil Hsien, Deloitte's manager for SAM and IT risk management, said his company has not received any new consultancy project from businesses on implementing SAM since January this year.

"But after the change in law, we have been conducting more seminars on awareness and we've got more audiences. Some of those businesses have approached the (software) vendors for help," he said.

"Companies in Singapore are now more open to SAM training," Hsien said. "Before this, a lot of them see such training as a way for vendors to demand compliance."