The BSA claims that while DrinkorDie may have been shut down as a result of co-ordinated global law enforcement actions, other warez groups are still active and continuing to cause harm. Jago was unable to provide figures on how much money software vendors had lost as a result of DrinkorDie's illegal pursuits but cited a study undertaken by IDC and commissioned by the BSA to indicate the knock-on effects of piracy on the wider economy.
The report found that 29 percent of software in the UK is not licensed properly, and that if 10 percent of this software was properly licensed paid for, the industry could generate a further £10 billion towards the UK's gross domestic product, provide £2.5 billion more in tax revenues and create 40,000 extra jobs, all within a three year period.
But some security experts claim it is high time that software vendors started becoming more proactive in protecting their software by using readily available technological mechanisms to safeguard it.
Hare Brown said: "It's not rocket science. It's about software companies making up their minds. They either want evidence to show that this software should be on that PC or they want a wide as possible distribution of their software and so are prepared to turn a blind eye. So the question is why haven't they put more stringent mechanisms in place to license their software before?"
Even five years ago, before online license registration was possible, suppliers could have requested that customers register their applications over the telephone, for example.
The fear was, however, that they would simply go to rivals rather than bother "so the software companies made it simple to use and asked customers to just click and agree. But now they don't want people stealing their software so they're gradually tightening down and it's also easier to do now there's the Internet", explains Hare Brown
There are already mechanisms in existence that could be used to stop software piracy from the outset such as digital watermarking or authentication, he argues.
"There's been a lot of research work funded by the European Union to come up with better mechanisms to prevent software piracy. It's put a lot of money into it, but it always takes time before the software community gets together and decides to adopt any particular form of copyright prevention technology," says Hare Brown.
The BSA's response to such logic is that, while its members have been exploring such options for some time, there is no one-size-fits-all-approach and different software markets require different IP protection solutions. "In terms of technical solutions, it's something that the industry has been looking at since piracy began. But it's a question of balancing intellectual-property protection against not holding back the legitimate needs of users," says the BSA's Jago.
Self-proclaimed anti-piracy groups such as the BSA argue there is "no silver bullet" for solving these problems as at the end of the day it comes down to individual ethics.
"The DrinkorDie group were hobbyists who were more or less competing among themselves as to who could crack code the quickest, but the problem is one of IP protection. In some cases, it's taken years and a huge investment to develop this software and if it's cracked and made available to anyone who wants to download it, it can be used for counterfeit purposes to sell on," says Jago.
Talkback
As a small software house, piracy is a major concern, and we deal with it using technology for copy protection.
While I am not a great believer in being able to apply legal enforcement of copyright, as it is usually very expensive, resulting in the legal profession gaining and all others seeing a loss. It is reassuring to note that should the need arise, the "law" can be used against individuals or organisations that deliberately set out to undermine the many years of hard work needed to produce good quality software. It is only such software that these pirates seek to copy as that is what brings (to them) the most income.
This matter should not be one of "our taxes used against copyright" but one of our rights to enfoce the law against theft of our business income, should that need be necessary, as in this case.
Hi
My name is Bill Barna and I have been developing software mainly games development since 1982. In my time as developer and producer for some of the biggest names in the industry, I have seen piracy and blatant theft on every level, warez is a word used to describe not only a group of thieves but a whole way of life for some of these people and they are all over the world. I have seen within days of a release, of a product, copies being sold on a market stall. I have used some of the anti-hacking and copy protection that is freely available to developers and I can tell you it is not worth the time and effort when it can be broken in minutes by organised pirates. The problem is that protection that is available to all of us is also available to the hackers, with this kind of information available to them how is going to stop them. Individually tailored protection for each product is the best way and this is still not secure, there’s always a way round. Protection software is not the only answer, arrest, prosecution and conviction is also needed. We need some high profile cases but we should also be sending a message to the smaller hacker and copiers that it is not ok to just do a quick copy for a friend or friends. As for the cost of prosecuting these people, it is a tiny amount compared to what it has cost us all over the past twenty plus years, if a software house closes down (and they have) and people are laid off then the cost is already past on to the public.
Perhaps legal aid should be means tested - seems to me the BSA with it's huge conglomerate members have more than enough money to fight their own battles, whereas some of the previous respondants clearly haven't. I totally object to a company like Microsoft using my tax money for, well, anything really. Actually I completely object to Microsoft, but that's another story.
It's clear that Microsoft in particular, and probably other companies as well, have benefitted massively from piracy. MS would never have gained the monopoly status they have now without it. If only those FAST adverts in the past had warned us about that!
Where the software is packaged up and sold on as the geniune item then legal aid should be available as this is pretty much fraud.
Where the software has been knowingly copied, from a simple copy for a friend to a serious operation then it should be up to the software companies to sue either of both parties for loss of earnings etc.
As a small business, if a customer doesn't pay me for work done I can't rely on the government suing them. I have to do it myself. I don't see why software companies think they should be treated any differently.