Jacques Rautenbach
Software piracy causes strong feelings: some people wouldn’t dream of not buying legal copies but the majority seem to adopt a “why should I?” attitude. Perhaps the problem lies with buying a computer.
You can easily fork out R10 000 on a decent workstation and you’re looking at a minimum of R15 000 for a respectable laptop, and these prices don’t include the software that you bought the product for in the first place. To the uneducated computer buyer this would seem highly unreasonable: “I pay 10 grand for something that does not work unless I spend another R5 000?”
In fact, in most cases the software costs more than the computer itself.
Software is big business in South Africa and piracy robs the economy of an estimated $94,2-million a year in retail revenue, according to Microsoft.
The organisation responsible for monitoring and enforcing “software law” in South Africa is the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a Section 21 company that works closely with the major software manufacturers (including Microsoft, Corel and Lotus).
South Africa is the one of the few countries in the world that has experienced an increase in piracy over the last year – 49% of software is pirated compared to 48% last year. According to this estimate, a pirate copy is made for each legal copy sold, despite the best efforts of the BSA and the software manufacturers it represents.
Although the figure may seem high, it looks rather paltry when compared to China where 98% of the operating sytems on workstations are pirated.
“South Africa is a first world country with respect to information technology, therefore there is no excuse for the high rate of abuse” says Gary Hodgson, OEM(original equipment manufacturer) director for Microsoft South Africa.
Hodgson says he prefers to call piracy “software theft”, because in effect pirating a copy is tantamount to walking into a store and walking out with software under your arm. An example of software piracy is copying your office software to finish work at home.
Microsoft works closely with the BSA and have recently made a number of large busts at some respectable firms. In the past settlements were made before a case went to trial but the BSA is moving towards taking a firmer stance. The organisation plans to make examples of companies by calling press conferences after busts. Even the government is currently under pressure from the United States to make sure all its computers are legal.
At the end of the day it’s the directors of the companies who get the stick should the cases go to court as the individual is less likely to be able to foot the bill which effectively works out to a fine for each unlicensed piece of software.
The Software Publishers Association (SPA) has compiled an eight-point programme for companies to ensure that they comply with the law.
The programme includes appointing a software manager, implementing a software code of ethics, having procedures for acquiring and registering software, establishing and maintaining a software log, conducting periodic audits, establishing an employee education programme, maintaining a library of software licences, and finally enjoying the benefits of compliance, in other words enjoying software support.
However, consumers should also be wary. The retail computer industry is highly competitive and consumers would be advised to never take anything the dealer says for granted. Hard disk loading is a procedure where the dealer loads an operating system such as Windows on multiple machines from one licensed OEM copy of the software. So always make sure that you receive software as well as documentation for all the products on the computer.
Certain companies such as Quark make use of far more intrusive means to ensure that you cannot use multiple copies of their software. A device called a dongle has to be attached to the computer for the software to work and only one dongle is available for each copy of the software.
Some manufacturers write the programmes to listen to network traffic for software with the same serial number. If another machine on the network has the same serial number the software will not operate.