In the previous issue of the Computer News (March/April 2001),  we informed our users of the forthcoming "Intellectual Property (Miscellaneous Amendment) Ordinance 2000" and provided a guideline on administering their software licenses in accordance with the legal requirements at (http://www.itservices.hku.hk/news/ccnews90/copyright.html). 

To help departments to better understand issues related to software license administration in order to comply with the amended ordinance, the Computer Centre has organized two briefing sessions in early April for designated software license administration officers from various HKU departments.  This is a summary of the most frequently asked questions and answers encountered in these seminars. 
 

The Computer Centre proposes the following guidelines for departments :

(A) Maintain an updated inventory of the software purchased.  The inventory should record the product name and publisher name, version number, purchase order number, invoice number,  number of licenses acquired per order, and above all, the serial number(s) of the PCs on which the software is installed or names of staff members to whom the licenses are assigned, so that ownership of these licenses can easily be traced. Click here for a sample inventory record.

(B) Perform regular software audit with software auditing tools.

(C) Appoint a staff member (Software License Administration Officer) to :

(i) coordinate (A) and (B) above,
(ii) bring to the department's users' attention if any illegal software is found, and 
(iii) eliminate the illegal software.

Q.2:   Are we obliged to implement Computer Center's guidelines?

The above guidelines have been proposed by the Computer Centre to help departments to comply with the law.  These guidelines provide an efficient and effective way of managing a department's software asset while ensuring legal compliance.  They are however not mandatory.  Departments can devise their own software license management scheme as they see fit.

The  'Software License Administration Officer' is merely a functional role in the department.  One cannot assign any legal responsibility to a functional role. 

We will give as much advice as we can.  However, different software may have different licensing conditions.  Users are advised to contact the software vendors concerned for clarification.

Yes.  Like other software, shareware available on the Internet has its own licensing conditions.  These conditions may be displayed on screen when you install the shareware.  Read them carefully.  Once you accept them, you enter into a license agreement with the provider of the shareware.

Normally, each license of a software is associated with one machine.  It would therefore be illegal to install the same copy of a software on more than one machine even though you use that software on different machines at different times.

A help-line is provided by Business Software Alliance (BSA) Tel: 2861-3366; their web site is at
           http://www.bsa.org/hongkong.

More information about the the amended law can be found at the following sites:

Tony Lai 
Tel: 2859-7976 
E-mail: lfk@cc.hku.hk