Software Piracy

[Tony]

I see in one of today’s newspapers that the estimated software piracy rate in Ireland is currently running at 51pc. This is 17pc higher than the Euro average of 34pc, and we rank 3rd. overall in western Europe, behind Greece (71pc) and Spain (53pc).

Considering most of us here are involved in IT, or are at least computer literate anyway, I'm just wondering what are your opinions on this issue? Does anyone have copied software on their home PC? I’d say that a fair percentage of home users do, and don't care either!

[Anders]

Irish companies that I have worked for usually buy one copy of something and let everyone (100s of people) in the company use it. I don't know if that is taken into account in these sort of surveys. The American company I work for now insists on buying a licensed copy of every product for every person using it. It seems they take audits seriously in the US.

[Michael Power]

I think that larger Irish businesses take it very seriously. In companies I've worked with in the past few years its been company policy that unlicensed software cannot be installed for any reason. A raid from the Business Software Alliance will do little for a companys credibility.

I recokon that very few home users are being legally compliant though. Who's going to go out and spend £500 on Microsoft Office Pro when they can take a CD home from work or borrow it from friend Jimmy ? And the risk of being caught is...zero.

Michael

[JSmith]

Well, all I can say is - if you own a company which uses illegal software - be careful because FACT intends to cut down drastically on the users of unlicensed and you have to admit - we're a VERY big target.

New laws allow heavy fines and even jail for offenders. :eek:

If you're a small company, there isn't much need to worry - the chances of you getting cought but if you're larger (500+ employees) be careful that you can prove you own each piece of software cause you're the target for FACTs new campaign.

Let's just hope we don't turn into the English and have the loosest privacy laws (does privacy even exist in England anymore!?!?), at least now they're able to assemble FACT SWAT teams to come into our homes and offices and search for copied software.

There's something to think about! :cool:

Before asks, no I don't copy software and no, I won't sell you MS Office for £2 behind the GPO at noon :D.

[Anders]

Surely you're not illegally copying software if you're installing a licensed product on different machines but only use one of them at the time? Hence copying software to your home computer should not break the rules, you're using the same license you use at work.

[JSmith]

Unfortunately if you read your EULA (End User License Agreement) I think you will find that illegal. Microsoft and their rich friends think that the best way for the world to operate is for EVERYONE to pay.

Let's take an example, a large bank (1,500 employees) owns a particulary expensive piece of accouting software. Now, Joe Soap - in IT thinks this piece of software would be great to help him organise his illegal money laundering processes in Afganistan. Now, the manafacturer of the software (for this example, we'll make up our own company - I'd hate to have someone jumping down my throat saying that a particular company does not make accounting software), AccounTech Corp, a massive corporation wants £100 per user license so the bank is forced to pay this - reluctantly.

So now Joe, has brought home the piece of software and his mate Jimmy wants it to (he's robbed a competing bank and needs to spread out the money to stop the cops finding out) and he uses it too. And so on, until both Jimmy's family and the whole Soap family (incl. granny and grandad) have ripped off AccounTech and it's many employees. See where this is going?

If you were a software manafacturer would you not get very ****ed off if every Soap family took home your software and used it there? I think you would.

[Anders]

Just bored myself enough to read one of them EULAs and it seems you're right.

[Suzysue]

Ok, ok, ok. My bro made me do it. He made me install the MS 2000 version that he bought onto my computer too. But I promise I'll delete it after I post this reply. :rolleyes:

[Tony]

I'd hazard a guess and say that the software copied the most has to be both MS Windows and Office. It just goes to show you how much of a monopoly Microsoft really has on the market. Just take a look of the top 10 selling software packages and you'll see that, for most of the time, the majority of them are from MS. Just imagine what record profits they'd make if their applications were copy proof.

[JSmith]

Anders, I know the feeling...I've read my EULA before cause I had nothing better to do. Pretty word-perfect isn't it? No way to mistake it's wording...otherwise I'd copy everything I've got and tell the piggies - "What?!?!? You're not allowed to copy software...I didn't know that HONESTLY!" :D

Tony, you're very right about the software being mostly Microsoft...that's mostly because no matter what anyone says about it's ethics Microsoft does make good software. They've already proven that, most of their games (e.g Age Of Empires 2) sell millions of copies worldwide because they can't be copied easily...though I doubt it's impossible to copy them at all.

Just goes to show though, putting a fair block in the way will easily deter people from copying your software.

[This message has been edited by JSmith (edited 31 May 2000).]