The Brampton Factor: Licensed to bill

Software piracy may well be a very bad thing. But does it justify inflicting misery on legitimate software buyers, asks Martin Brampton.

A phrase often crops up in connection with housing - "peacefully enjoy". It nicely captures the expectation of someone who has bought or rents a property.

There is no reason not to apply the same notion to any purchase. When we buy a software product, we hope to enjoy it in peace.

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I thought of this phrase recently when my Windows XP machine died. So far as I know, it was not my fault. The software just stopped working in such a way there seemed no alternative to complete reinstallation.

That was bad enough but worse was to come. Before the installation got far, the licence code was demanded. Now Microsoft prints the code in rather small type, and insists that it be stuck on the machine.

It's dark and rather uncomfortable under my desk, so retrieving the code was not an easy task. Two attempts were needed because I misread one of the letters in the half-dark.

But that was not the end of my troubles. Towards the end of the installation, the software said that it needed to be "activated". Otherwise it would not work. That could be done over the internet, and the machine was certainly connected.

Unfortunately, the software seemed unable to use the connection and insisted that telephone validation was required. To do this, it gave me a 54-digit number that I was expected to key into the telephone.

At the end of that, a mechanical voice read out another 42-digit number that had to be written down and keyed into the computer.

Well, this does not seem much like "peaceful enjoyment" to me. After all, I never wanted to have to reinstall the software in the first place, and it is software to which I have a legal right, having paid the asking price in the proper manner.

There is a lot of talk about the awfulness of software piracy but little seems to be said about the gross inconveniences that vendors seem willing to inflict on legitimate buyers.

This all seems part of a wider pattern, where the publicity machines of the likes of the Federation Against Software Theft (Fast) pump out comments that suggest the civilised world is about to end unless ever more draconian legislation is passed to halt the immense losses suffered by vendors.

Yet how real are these losses? Microsoft has said it alone is losing £250m annually in the UK from piracy. If we accept that figure seriously, then it is quite remarkable that Fast proclaims on its homepage that in the past five years £1.8m has been levied in fines, and Fast has recovered no less than £5.5m. That is more than £1m per year.

Should we conclude from those figures that the alleged problem is being wildly exaggerated, or should we suppose that Fast is extraordinarily ineffective in its recovery actions?

And in the particular case of Microsoft, Fast's £1m per year is dwarfed by the fines totalling €1.68m imposed on Microsoft because EU judges determined that the company had abused its monopoly position.

If the judges are correct, then we are entitled to assume that software is costing more than it might by virtue of Microsoft's restriction of competition.

In fact, even Fast's claim that every breach of a software licence constitutes theft is contentious. Andy Burton, founder of asset-management firm Centennial and a director at Fast, has said: "Most companies today I believe fall foul of compliance issues because of poor management rather than malicious behaviour."

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