The story with A.M. Ponosov - director of a rural school accused of using pirated software

“Is he guilty, or are these goats to blame who slipped the case to him?” - the rhetorical question is asked by the host of the program “We are looking for a way out ...” on the Echo-Moscow radio station , Matvey Ganapolsky, Olga Dergunova, to the president of Microsoft in Russia and the CIS.
Let me remind you that Alexander Mikhailovich Ponosov, is prosecuted under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, about violation of copyright and related rights.

The director of the village school is accused of using pirated Microsoft software, namely the Windows operating system and the MS Office software package. A person faces a very real time, under the new legislation up to 5 years. The case threatens to become a precedent and the likelihood that his "unwind to the fullest" is quite great. Ponosov’s rights will be defended by Anatoly Kucherena.

It turned out to be an unusually interesting program, with interesting opinions and voting (Echo-Moscow is not an organization that specializes in polls, but the results are really interesting, note the author). I don’t have the moral right to lay out the entire text of the program, I shortened it as I could, but I still tried to lay out the most interesting moments here ...
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M. GANAPOLSKY: You see, our radio listeners want your quick and instant death - and preferably at the place of origin on Red Square. Because the relatives of rich Gates, who do not know where to put money, pursue a little rural teacher. So let's dot the "i" again. So - the trial of Ponosov not with your filing? Did you write a secret denunciation to the prosecutor’s office to open a criminal case against him?

O. DERGUNOVA: Microsoft does not write secret denunciations
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Microsoft is the aggrieved party in this process. Therefore, our task, using this case as a precedent, is to find out what the reasons for today led the school principal to be accused of this process.
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If you solve the problem systematically, do a few things. The first is to teach school principals to be the managers of those organizations for which they are responsible. The education system is changing, and our old teacher, who was responsible only for the educational process, is replacing the teacher, who at the same time must be a manager. Therefore - to learn. Secondly, people who go to the position of director should clearly assess whether they are ready to be managers. Because it requires a completely different professional knowledge –accounting, asset management, such complex matters as the management of licensed software. And the people who have become - 60 thousand directors who work in schools today, the question is, you have to ask yourself, using, in fact, this precedent is whether you are ready to be the director who is fully responsible not only for the educational process. Well, the third - at the level of regional administrations, which are much more trained, more accustomed to working with such complex matter as supplies - learn to control and not provoke schools and principals who do not know how to use unlicensed software.

Actually, the opinion of Alexander Mikhailovich:

In fact, it turned out that the computers arrived, they were in boxes for two weeks while the school was finished. Then they were put in a class that simply didn’t work - they didn’t connect, there was no place to even connect there — that is, they donated it with shortcomings. Well, then the network cords were not enough, in September I was lying in bed with my heart and at that moment they were just plugged in. That is, I left the hospital, how they work and work. And thank God. The question is not asked.

In fact, I even have no special training in computer science. And how much I work at school, I have not seen a single informative letter about software in general. As for deliveries, well, as if the authorities somehow said that now — well, since what year I don’t remember — that there is an agreement, and computers will be supplied only with programs, look at this — the program is in place, and what programs should be - I think respect for the hardware, and so on.

But these voting results were obtained by the end of the transfer:


Magic numbers:

O. DERGUNOVA: The level of piracy in Russia is 83%.

The full text can be found on the website of the radio station, here you can also download a podcast (part 1 , 2 ).