BUSINESS
Bertie Ahern wins Cyber Champion Award
09-10-2000
by Joe Lynam
The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD was presented with the "Cyber Champion Award" by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in Dublin on Monday.
The BSA acts as the voice of the world's leading software developers. BSA members include multinationals such as Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Lotus and Intel.
Ahern was presented with the award at Newman House, Dublin, in the presence of some of Europe's top software executives including senior executives from Autodesk, Compaq, IBM Macromedia, Novell and Symantec. The US Ambassador, Michael Sullivan, and Ministers Tom Kitt and Seamus Brennan were also present.
The accolade was made by the BSA to the Irish Government, the first such award to be made to a European institution, in acknowledgment of the "sustained efforts made by the Taoiseach and the Irish Government to protect software in Europe."
Ireland, where software piracy runs at an estimated 51 percent compared with Western Europe's 34 percent, is the first country in Europe to introduce strict anti-software piracy law through the enactment of the Copyright Act 2000 and the Electronic Commerce Act 2000.
Presenting the award to Ahern, the CEO of BSA Robert Holleyman told the gathering of political and software leaders that software piracy represented a cost of USD118 million per annum to the software industry in Ireland alone.
The Cyber Champion Award is presented annually to political leaders across the world in recognition of their efforts to support the growth of the software industry. Ireland, which plays host to all the top software companies in the world, recently overtook the USA as the world's largest software exporter.
"After 20 years in public life, you see me facing a very rare difficulty, namely how to handle praise!" Ahern said when receiving the Award.
"Ireland needs to stay ahead in the competitive hi-tech and communications industries. The Irish-owned software sector now employs over 10,000 people from a very low base eight or nine years ago," added Ahern.
When asked by ElectricNews.Net whether this new Copyright Law would lead to very rich software companies bullying small firms, Robert Holleyman said, "the new legislation [will] compensate the single developer for their work and punish large scale aggravated damage. There will be a lot of breath and fairness to this new law."
The Taoiseach also announced that the Government intends to lead by example by revising and updating standards for Government departments and offices by changing existing policies concerning the use of software.
"The aim is to raise awareness and to ensure that Departments and Bodies under their aegis, have an effective software compliance programme in place," explained Ahern.
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