              INDIA TO ALLOW SOFTWARE DUPLICATION 

NEW DELHI, INDIA, India is always looking to reduce its foreign
exchange imbalance, so this makes the latest decision to relax
copyright provisions on legal copying of imported software all the
more understandable. The Indian government has announced that it
will now allow local companies to enter into deals with foreign
software houses to duplicate their software.

The government also hopes that the problem of software piracy will
also be solved with this arrangement. More tangibly, however, the
price of such locally produced software is expected to be around
half of the imported product.

Overseeing the projects will be the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
which will limit payable royalties to a maximum of 30 percent of
the Indian price of the package. This control is necessary, the RBI
claims, to ensure that the foreign exchange reserves are not
depleted, as they are at the moment with imported high technology
products.

Until this government decision, the duplication of imported
software was not allowed in India. As a result, companies that
wished to use several copies of a particular package had to import
and pay an astonishingly high 85 percent customs duty on all
copies. Needless to say, the attraction of software piracy was
great -- hence this government climb-down on the matter.


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|Article submitted by Brain Storm Learning-BBS (713)855-8105 |
|Sysop:  Gloria Short                                        |    
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