The 6th Interdepartmental Ministerial Meeting on Promoting the Use of Copyrighted Software was held at the end of February. The routine annual meeting summarized the achievements in 2016 and passed the 2017 work plan. It was stated at the meeting that basically all central SOEs, medium and large financial institutions, press and publishing companies are using copyrighted software, which is gradually entering more private companies. However, it is a widely-known fact that the government copyrighted software initiatives at the current stage only cover OS, antivirus and OA software. There is still a long way to go to comprehensively popularize copyrighted software nationwide.
A highlight of the meeting which is worth mentioning is the call for integrating the efforts in promoting copyrighted software with information safety. As the latter in practice has been easily interpreted as an encouragement to Chinese indigenous products, it would naturally bring challenges to BSA members.