Do The Right Thing

A growing number of businesses and colleges are aware of the benefitsof having legal software. Steve Gold reports on the success of initiativesby major software vendors

It is now more than 18 months since Microsoft announced the formation of its Legalware operation, a strategy that initially sought to educate the software industry that piracy is a bad thing for all concerned.

In April last year, when Mark Roberts was appointed software theft programme manager at Microsoft, he said the aim of the service was not to frighten or prosecute companies that break the rules on software licensing, but to educate them and help them get a clean bill of health.

'Legalware is a free service for our customers' benefit - it is not designed to get them into court,' he said at the time. 'Obviously, Legalware is only a matter between ourselves and our customers. If a company continues breaking the rules regarding software licensing, there is the risk that the Federation Against Software Theft (Fast) or the Business Software Alliance (BSA) might hit them with a routine audit, but we will not pass on details we learn about our customers to these organisations.'

Legalware is about helping the customer know exactly what software they have installed on which machines, and the total numbers of licences that are being used. 'That knowledge is worth having,' says Roberts. 'We must educate our customers that it has a net worth in its own right, distinct from the cost of software licences.'

At the time, the Legalware campaign was a largely UK initiative. Microsoft has since extended its anti-piracy effort on an international basis.

The Legalware programme is a combination of business templates, services and software tools - the last two provided through authorised Microsoft audit service partners and audit tools providers.

Roberts says the programme covers three main areas of operation: knowledge transfer, audit and reconciliation, and certification and control. Knowledge transfer is a pooling of knowledge on piracy, with Microsoft and resellers seeking to educate the software user community about the legal issues concerning software use.

The audit and reconciliation aspect operates like the BSA's software audit package, which allows companies to audit their own software. Unlike the BSA package, the audit programme seeks to give companies knowledge about their own systems and the software, rather than acting as agent provocateur.

The certification and control aspect involves Microsoft shipping licence usage monitoring modules with its server-based packages. This allows the network administrator to monitor usage and buy extra licences where appropriate.

Despite the fact that Legalware has been enormously successful for Microsoft and several elements of the software industry, the company was not the first to launch an anti-piracy initiative. In August 1994, Lotus introduced its compliance anti-piracy check scheme.

Lotus' scheme centred on an anti-piracy utility shipping as an integral feature of upgrade copies of 1-2-3 for Windows, Ami Pro, Freelance Graphics and Smartsuite. The utility is a compliance checking code that will only install an upgrade if a qualifying product is present on the user's PC.

At the time, Lotus claimed that the compliance checking code simplified the upgrade procedure for both it and its dealers, because it replaced the need for original disks, manual pages or similar proofs of purchase by the customer.

Back in August 1994, John Tuohy, then senior European brand manager of Lotus' desktop products, said the company was intent on making it as easy as possible for legitimate users to benefit from the latest technology.

'After several months of piloting this system in the UK, we have found it to be popular with our users and our channel partners, so it is being extended across Europe,' he said.

While the compliance system employed on Lotus products still exists on the company's upgrade packages sold through the reseller channel, several other software vendors have climbed aboard the anti-piracy bandwagon, as witnessed by Novell's recent activities.

Following a successful prosecution in Belgium in the summer, Novell last month raided the home of a 27-year-old computer technician calling himself The Pirate.

Martin Smith, Novell licensing manager for EMEA, says the case was significant as it was the first major case involving a BBS plugged into the Internet.

Smith claims that, following Novell's undercover surveillance of The Pirate's BBS, Swiss police executed a raid on the technician's home in the early hours of 15 October.

The Pirate, according to Novell, was offering more than $150,000 of unlicensed Novell products, along with commercial software from other BSA members, to anyone with a connection to the Internet.

During the enquiry, Novell anti-piracy investigators also found files on the system that contained bomb-making recipes and instructions for defrauding credit cards.

During the raid, officers from the commercial crime unit seized an extensive collection of computer hardware and software. The Pirate, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was taken into custody, and could face a maximum prison sentence of three years and a fine of up to u130,000 if convicted.

Smith says the case is a landmark for the software industry, because individuals and organisations that distribute unlicensed software on the Net now know they can be caught and prosecuted. 'This is the first of a series of Internet-related actions that will be brought by Novell and the BSA in Europe in the coming months,' he says.

Novell, he says, is committed to working with law enforcement groups across Europe to halt the supply of illegal products on the Net.

'Electronic distribution of illegally duplicated software poses a threat to the industry and to consumers,' he says. 'In many cases, the software available from such sites has been passed around the world, each transfer exposing it to potential corruption and viruses. For the user this inevitably leads to system downtime or loss of data.'

Microsoft is still active on the anti-piracy front. Only last month, it took the wraps off a clean-up schools campaign, aiming to educate PC users in education that software piracy is against their best interests.

The company has signed The Database, a Nottingham-based software distributor, to become one of the first Microsoft education resellers to ensure the schools and colleges it supplies have totally legal software.

To persuade users to agree to software audits, the distributor is offering schools and colleges substantial discounts if they are pronounced clean.

Microsoft claims that studies by research firm Spikes Cavell show 80 per cent of educational establishments are making the eradication of software theft a priority.

Kathleen Lund, chief executive of the Technology Colleges Trust, a consortium of schools and colleges in the UK, says the trust is well aware of the piracy problem that schools and colleges face. 'We feel we have a responsibility to ensure students and teachers recognise the implications of using illegal software,' she says.

Lund adds that ensuring the schools in the trust's network are legal 'also means they are better able to control and manage the software within their organisations, which ultimately has its own cost benefits'.

The trust represents over 300 schools and colleges committed to giving priority to IT in the learning process.

According to Dave Gregory, Microsoft strategic relations manager, software theft is rife within schools and colleges, as well as among students using their computers at home.

'We're already seeing a huge interest from the education sector to ensure that they're clean and legal,' he says. 'We're working closely with our partners on a number of programs to ensure we provide our customers with the knowledge, tools, and services they need to help eradicate software theft.'

Microsoft claims its Legalware operation is paying dividends by improving public awareness of piracy as a bad thing. It says that as a result of its Legalware campaign, more businesses are aware of the legal position relating to illegal software on their systems.

Two years ago, Microsoft commissioned Spikes Cavell to assess the business community's attitudes to software piracy. That survey led to the creation of the Legalware campaign in spring last year.

Now, says Microsoft, research shows that UK businesses are aware of not only the legal implications of piracy but also the benefits that can be derived from preventing the illegal use of software.

In 1994, just 22 per cent of the UK business community perceived that complying with the law was a beneficial result of eradicating software theft. Today, Spikes Cavell research shows there is a three-fold increase in awareness, with 63 per cent of UK businesses perceiving that 'being legal' is a benefit of eradicating software theft in their organisation.

'The difference between the two sets of results was considerable,' says Spikes Cavell research director Andrew Roberts. He adds that the research shows an increase in awareness of software theft as a business issue, and this is reflected in the figures relating to the benefits that can be derived from stopping the illegal use of software.

Roberts says: 'In 1994, 65 per cent of respondents considered that software theft hindered the running of an organisation. In 1996, this figure rose to 78 per cent.' He adds that the results highlight how perceptions and reactions differ between specific sectors of the UK business community.

'While 67 per cent of respondents see stopping software theft as a business priority, it is more of a priority for large organisations than for small ones,' he says.

According to Sharon Baylay, software theft marketing manager at Microsoft, the 1994 research shows that businesses in the UK are aware of software theft as a business issue, but lack the means to do anything to tackle the problem.

'These latest findings show just how far we've succeeded in educating a large part of the business community as to the benefits that audit, effective management and control of software have to offer,' she says.

Baylay says the latest research demonstrates the challenge that Microsoft faces in providing specific tools, services and knowledge designed 'with distinct sectors of the business community in mind'.

In 1996, 32 per cent of the survey's respondents perceived that there is a large or very large risk of being caught, compared with 26 per cent in 1994. In 1994, only 24 per cent of businesses had audits in place to control the use of software. But Microsoft claims this has now more than doubled to 55 per cent.

Whereas 32 per cent thought there was a need for tools to overcome software theft in 1994, figures from 1996 show that 74 per cent now believe there is a need.

Microsoft has been taking a keen interest in educating the channel about the problems software piracy can cause, launching a clean dealer campaign in May.

It is almost certain that the Legalware programme and Novell's active anti-piracy stance of the past few years, led to Fast's announcement last month that it is teaming up with the Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) to collaborate on a new qualification, the Certificate in Software Management.

Fast says the qualification is 'relevant to anyone in the information industry who is responsible for the management of software', including corporate software policy, auditing, protection of intellectual property rights or the prevention of theft and misuse of software.

Although Fast has designed the syllabus, ISEB will award certificates to anyone passing exams set by computer examinations company Sylvan Prometric.

Plans call for Fast and ISEB to administer the qualification jointly.

ISEB representative Pat Harris says anyone wishing to enter for the examinations must first attend an accredited course. One of the first companies to offer such a course is Peritas, a computer training company that provides part-time and online courses across the Internet. Other organisations will be offering various courses for the examination later this year.