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The Brampton Factor: Licensed to bill
Have software licences and anti-piracy gone too far?

By Martin Brampton

Published: Wednesday 07 May 2008

So, corporate misuse of software licences seems to be down to incompetence, which is not yet generally counted as a crime. In fact, this incompetence is often compounded by vendors whose record keeping is rather worse than that of their customers.

Moreover, little trouble seems to be taken to ensure that licences can be purchased to match the needs of customers.

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Why is it so difficult, for example, to negotiate a site licence based on disclosure of staff numbers and agreement on percentage use - with a guarantee that there will then be no audit or other enforcement action prior to the next negotiation?

Why are vendors so unhelpful over licensing for light enquiry use of software, as opposed to regular full use?

When it comes to individuals, the situation is far less simple than Fast would have us believe. Theft was originally understood to be the unlawful removal of someone else's property. It is pretty clear why this is damaging to the victim.

But it has yet to be explained how the owner of a digital entity is damaged if someone takes a copy of it that they would not have wanted if they had to pay for it. Indeed there is often seen to be an advantage to the "victim" in achieving market share, especially in the polarised markets of IT where leadership is all.

The revenue that is supposedly lost is pure illusion, since in many cases the users of copies either could not or would not afford the official price.

Despite all this confusion, there are calls for the providers of internet access to police transfers of software. This is an extraordinary suggestion, tantamount to demanding that bus companies guarantee that their passengers never carry stolen goods.

When representatives of organisations such as Fast regularly speak about suspicions rather than facts, what do we think the hapless ISP should be doing? How exactly would they detect unlawful software transfers?

Given the huge effort that is going into removing spam from the welter of email, and its decidedly partial success, there will always be considerable doubts. And they would surely include false positives with possibly serious consequences for innocent internet users.

It does seem that buyers of software have legitimate grievances that go unheard in all the shouting about piracy.

Before castigating their customers or the general public, it would be far more constructive for software vendors to consider whether their licences are fair to users. And to check that enforcement mechanisms are not unreasonably cumbersome.

Most of all, before attempting to take the moral high ground, vendors could look to their own practices.