Comment: Pirates exploit frustrated users

Last week, a vendor of DVD-copying software offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who would tip it off about pirates using its tools. No one called. Does this mean no one is pirating software with the firm's tools? The answer depends on how you define software piracy, and what drives otherwise perfectly honest people to don the virtual eye-patch and parrot.

Personally, I see a big difference between black-market duplicators and those people who buy pirate software - the dealers and the junkies, if you will.

Microsoft's own antipiracy team found that 87 percent of their test purchases of Microsoft products in 2002 turned out to be illegal copies. But then, I ask myself, if Microsoft had to take the CD-ROMs back to the lab to analyse them before discovering which were fakes, what chance have you or I got of spotting the difference - or even caring?

Regardless, Microsoft went ahead with 1,000 prosecutions in the UK following these discoveries. But I wonder if it is unjustifiably blaming the consumers - and by that I also include the resellers who purchase stock through the channel - rather than the perpetrators.

I'm reminded of the dark days of the early 1990s when Microsoft representatives would visit computer shops pretending to be customers with CD drive problems. Invariably, the guy in the shop would soon cave in and promise to post them a copy of MSCDEX.EXE - which added CD-ROM support to MS-DOS - on a spare floppy disk, whereupon Microsoft's lawyers would pounce.

I don't condone piracy, but tackling the problem in this manner is akin to prosecuting Jim Hawkins for believing Long John Silver was just a cook.

Apparently "billions of pounds" are lost to software piracy in Europe each year. But this assumes that each pirated copy represents a lost sale for the software vendors. That's like saying burglars would buy a new VCR every day, or that joyriders would happily buy a new car every Saturday night, if they weren't nicking them instead.

Even people who are not inclined towards a life of crime have been known to indulge in an "extended software evaluation period". The reason given, particularly by students and smaller firms, is that the full products cost too much. Push your urban pirate a little further, and they will grumble that they only use a tiny fraction of the functionality of the product, so why should they pay through the nose for features they don't want?

OK, what is it worth? Name your price. The thriving shareware community suggests that plenty of people will pay money for a cheap product rather than simply pirate it, because they plainly see value for their money. So one way out of the piracy trap for software publishers could be to offer "lite" versions of their products at budget prices. Not cutesy home-user junk fronted by wizards, or ghastly SE releases that are so stripped bare of functionality that you feel compelled to upgrade, but good-quality software for decent people.

Otherwise, let those software publishers walk the plank and search for booty elsewhere. For every Microsoft Office there's a StarOffice. Software piracy is a serious affliction, but it reveals a similarly serious gap in the market for the enterprising developer to fill.

Have your say: reply to IT Week

More IT Week Comments