Partnership to fight

Pirate chasers share their experiences

On October 3, Moscow hosted the annual meeting of participants in the non-profit partnership of software suppliers (NP SPP), whose members include both Western companies that have long been present on the Russian market and domestic firms engaged in the production and distribution of software products.

Computer piracy remains one of the main problems of software manufacturers in Russia, and the main goal of the partnership participants is to combat it. According to Anna Lavrinova, deputy director of the NP PPP, the situation with the prosecution of pirates has improved markedly over the past year - there are now enough levers of influence to reduce the level of piracy. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs cooperates with copyright holders (NP PPP develops teaching aids for law enforcement officers). Experiments are currently underway to introduce various educational programs in schools. At the moment, Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which provides for liability for copyright infringement, which was adopted in its current edition after a meeting between Vladimir Putin and representatives of the IT industry in 2001, works quite effectively. The authorities, in their desire to help software producers in the fight against piracy, sometimes even show excessive zeal, proposing, for example, to mark licensed software with a special excise stamp. The effectiveness of these stamps in eradicating piracy is practically zero: according to market participants, during the period of this rule, pirates could buy stamps inexpensively, in any quantities and without problems. While the software manufacturers themselves had to go through the entire procedure of obtaining marks officially, which led to an unjustified increase in costs, especially in the production of small-run specific software.

The position of the software industry in relation to the state as an instrument in the fight against piracy today is as follows: the legislative framework for combating piracy in all its manifestations (illegal duplication, trade, hacking, etc.) is sufficient, but law enforcement practice needs to be improved. Frequent demonstrative raids on traders are only effective in appearance. Manufacturers of counterfeit software should be looked for and brought to justice, which is more difficult and unsafe - criminal money is circulating in the underground “business”, comparable to the volume of drug trafficking. Often, manufacturers of pirated discs are located at various defense enterprises, to which the police do not have access. The police, as a rule, find ways to carry out checks, but sometimes this is not enough. Thus, the Rubin plant (Penza region), caught printing counterfeit software, caused damage amounting to several tens of millions of dollars to domestic software manufacturers alone. The case, however, fell apart because the investigation was unable to prove intent in the actions of the company’s management. Having replaced the director, the plant continues to operate.

Nevertheless, there is progress for the better - the state allows us to fight piracy at the legislative level, and it makes it easier to control production facilities, even those located in defense factories. Increasingly, criminal cases are not initiated by copyright holders. Law enforcement agencies themselves contact software manufacturers when they discover trade in counterfeit goods. The number of requests to companies from law enforcement agencies over the past six months has increased from 51 to 56%. Investigators are now trained in techniques for detecting copyright crimes. For example, one of the most pressing problems is being solved - “black implanters” (a special type of pirates who specialize not in selling, but in installing counterfeit software). They resort to their “help” when installing expensive, well-protected corporate software. According to the NP PPP, a significant portion of the sentences are handed down for illegal installation of software. The fight against Internet piracy is also progressing successfully. A recent example: in Udmurtia, a criminal case was initiated against a citizen who placed on his server the products “Compass”, “1C: Enterprise” and programs for hacking them. An important precedent - this year the author of the program for hacking 1C products, Sergei Davydyuk from Blagoveshchensk, Amur Region, was sentenced to two years probation under Part 1 of Art. 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs.”

Foreign producers have also stepped up their efforts to reduce piracy. For example, in Russia Adobe is starting to fight for its rights, whose damage from piracy in our country amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. Microsoft, and now also Autodesk and Borland, have been cooperating with Russian law enforcement officers and NP PPP for a long time.

Yuri SINODOV