With the Ministry of Justice cracking down on software piracy, the National Teachers' Association (全國教師會) demanded that the US-based software company Microsoft make its products available to educational establishments for free, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.
Chang Hui-shan (
PHOTO: LIO SHIN-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
If the software provider pressures schools to pay exorbitant fees on the premise of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR), Chang said, the association would lobby international teachers' groups to boycott Microsoft products.
The justice ministry's move to crack down on IPR violations starting from May 1 has triggered an intense backlash on college campuses, who have complained that Microsoft controls an unfair monopoly.
TSU lawmaker Su Yin-kuei (
Supporting the association's claim, PFP lawmaker Hsieh Chang-chieh (謝章捷) said Microsoft had exploited its consumers, mainly students, since the company's Windows products are incompatible with each other.
TSU Legislator Lin Chih-lung (
Lin said the Institute for Information Industry (
The justice ministry launched its "2002 Business Against Piracy Campaign" with a series of seminars in March.
The seminars, held in conjunction with the Business Software Alliance (BSA), covered legal issues and management in protecting IPR.
Companies were given a 45-day grace period in which to identify any illegal software they might be using, after which they would be liable for prosecution. The grace period ended on on Wednesday last week.
To help with the crackdown, the public has been asked to inform the BSA if they think their company is using pirated software in return for a reward.
The BSA said it had already received 300 calls, about eight times more than in previous crackdowns.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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