New twist in fight against software piracy
Published: 18 Nov 1999 15:10 GMT
The Business Software Alliance has filed a civil suit in the Northern District of California accusing 25 individuals of swapping pirated software on a high-speed Internet Relay Chat channel called warez4cable.
"I think this is something of a groundbreaking lawsuit. It is certainly the most aggressive action of this type that we have brought," said Bob Kruger, vice president of enforcement for the Business Software Alliance, which has deemed it time to go after online "pirates."
The BSA member companies that have filed the case include Adobe, Autodesk, Corel, Macromedia, Microsoft, Network Associates and Symantec.
The warez 25 are not your typical pirates, however. Far from the companies that the BSA usually goes after -- which are often organised firms that hawk items at swap meets and elsewhere or companies where copying is rampant among employees -- the 25 defendants in this case are residential users of the Internet.
One person listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, who asked not to be named, told ZDNet News he didn't realise he was a target, and claimed the BSA had the wrong guy. The defendant, first informed of the suit by a reporter, said he was alarmed that his name and number appeared in the suit for "all the world to see."
Some of the defendants appeared to be neighbours or roommates and several were women, at least one of which didn't speak English. "Certainly the stereotypical warez pirate is a young white computer-literate male," admitted the BSA's Kruger. "I don't know if this is an unusual sampling. In some cases, the defendant is the parent of the actual person who did the pirate."
Kruger defended the crackdown on Internet users, saying it has to start somewhere. "If you permit piracy to run unchecked, then you let the idea that just because technology lets me do something, it's legal," he said. "It's not just this little group having fun and trading programs."
Jonathan Band, a copyright law expert and partner at law firm Morrison Forrester, said the BSA publicised the issue for two reasons. One, to justify its existence to its members, and two, "they feel it has a deterrent effect."
Band, however, isn't so sure that it does. He said software pirates probably do not have an intricate knowledge of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so they may not know how the law applies to the public. That act -- passed in 1998 -- gave BSA investigators a hefty boost by lending more power to subpoenas requiring Internet service providers to turn over information identifying their users.
Band said that before the special subpoena clause, the BSA would have had to convince a judge that the subpoenas were necessary, and hope the judge agreed. "It would've been messier without question," Band said. "This definitely streamlines the process."
At least one of cable providers subpoenaed refused to turn over the information, said the BSA's Kruger.
Legislation regulating the use of information about cable network subscribers requires cable companies to protect the viewing information of their audience. Many cable companies have applied the law to the Internet browsing habits of their subscribers as well. "Overwhelmingly, the other companies felt that the DMCA subpoenas gave them the ability to (turn over the requested user information)," said Kruger, who said the investigation into that service's members is not over.
"We are not accepting that some people will escape because we could not get their information within a certain time frame," he said.
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