Translated material
Pirates against their will
Stolen software is dangerous for system administrators and IT directors of companies
According to the BSA (Business Software Alliance - an international organization for the protection of the rights of software manufacturers), the level of software piracy in Russia was 80%, with an average value of 67% for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The downward trend is more or less clearly visible. In 2005 it was 83%, and in 2004 and 2003 - 87%. In certain sectors of the Russian software market, the situation is no worse than, say, in Canada with its 31% piracy rate (according to 2006 data). In informal conversations, representatives of Western software companies operating in Russia also admit this. They consider the BSA data (prepared by the analytical company IDC) to be somewhat inflated.Successes in countering pirates are even more clearly visible because this year the most popular topic of conversation in the professional IT community in Russia was not the problem of switching to Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. IT directors at conferences (and system administrators online -forums) are much more actively discussing ways to protect themselves from criminal prosecution. “Don’t expose yourself! Demand from your superiors to purchase yellow boxes or a written order to crack... And if you are swept away, then look for a smart lawyer!!!” - here is a quote from an online discussion of another story of the conviction of a system administrator who followed the lead of his superiors and installed an unlicensed copy of the 1C software product. The recommendation to require a written order from management to purchase tools for hacking licensed software, you must admit, is funny.
Cases where system administrators who installed fraudulent software receive real rather than suspended sentences are no longer isolated. Fortunately, there are much more suspended sentences. Let us note that a suspended sentence is a big problem for a respectable citizen. There will be problems with obtaining a visa to travel to a number of countries, and in all applications you will have to indicate “I have a criminal record under Art. 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation."
We do not have absolute figures on the number of criminal cases against computer pirates considered by the courts this year. However, we know that Directorate “K” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (its area of responsibility is crimes in the field of high technologies) conducts 14% of investigations specifically against users of counterfeit software, and 98% of such cases reach the court. In addition to the “K” department, the UBEP also acts against companies using unlicensed software, and most often acts on its own initiative. According to the BSA, copyright holders initiate less than 10% of software authentication checks conducted in enterprises. In other cases, the police act without anyone’s special request.
What practical recommendations follow from this for IT workers? The most obvious is to use free software instead of Microsoft Office. Office software is the most popular class of software products, which no company can do without, and it is its counterfeit copies that the police are primarily looking for when they come to check financial and economic activities. The OpenOffice.org software package, functionally similar to MS Office, is free and quite suitable for work. Additional user training in this case is, of course, necessary, but it is unlikely to be more difficult than when implementing MS Office 2007. This summer, at a meeting of the Moscow club of IT directors, those present discussed, in particular, exactly this alternative - the situation was a couple of years ago unthinkable.
For many software products, however, there are no analogues in the world of freely distributed software. In this case, the risk faced by the system administrator who installed a pirated copy of the software is very high. For example, the widely used Autodesk design automation programs (in particular, most Russian architects work with them) in 2007 became as popular a reason for initiating criminal cases for violation of copyright and related rights as 1C products.
If a company is going to install software, the rights to which are protected by law, but the company’s management nevertheless decides to use illegal copies, the head of the IT department can try to protect himself from criminal prosecution by writing an official letter to his superiors, which must indicate that the exploitation counterfeit software is subject to the criminal code (the letter, of course, must be registered by the company's records management system). This is the recommendation of the BSA lawyer.
The main source of threat for an illegal user, as we have already found out, is the police. In addition to it, three organizations of copyright holders in the field of software are active in Russia. This is the already mentioned BSA, the Non-Profit Partnership of Software Product Suppliers (NP PPP plays a role in the domestic Russian market that is largely similar to that of the BSA on an international scale) and Russian Shield.
BSA and NP PPP do not conduct operational activities. Their mission is limited to methodological work, legal support for copyright holders, developing techniques to combat pirates, training law enforcement officers, etc. “Russian Shield” is also a non-profit organization and, strictly speaking, does not conduct operational activities. But, according to the head of this organization, Yuri Zlobin, he can prepare an “action of intimidation” against a company that violates the rights of a member of the Russian Shield. Having convinced himself that the use of counterfeit software is indeed taking place, Mr. Zlobin initiates a police check of the offending company. However, such cases are rare.