Be still my rebel heart

Pro

1 April 2005

Deep in the Irish psyche the rebel lurks, pure bred through the generations. In its positive genetic form it makes battlers of us, winners against the odds, at its mutated worst it makes us indiscriminate in the systems we oppose. Tour any packed pub car park on a Friday evening to comprehend our defiance of the system, (or else lemonade sales are soaring). To the rebel, Irish laws are guidelines, and if you feel you must venture on the wrong side of the line, so be it, just don’t get caught.

Personal or business, it is just the same — battling against the odds; working the system. Nowhere is this more evident in business than in our flagrant determination to steal software. Ten years ago almost seventy five per cent of software in Ireland had not been paid for; a decade of education, legal evolution, and patchy enforcement has driven that figure to forty per cent, at which it remains resolutely wedged. In effect one in every two software programmes in Ireland is stolen.

Statistics fail to change attitudes. Our rebel psyche sets us against the system. We see no harm in the single CD-ROM mounted on a networked server, or the unplugged network cable that allows two copies of a package to run. ‘Don’t they make enough out of us; look at the size of corporate profits’. The same attitude that sends us hurtling down the road after a few scoops ringing ahead for a curry on the mobile, conspires to siphon off $80m revenue from the Irish software sector annually.

It’s an apparently victimless crime and you are never going to get caught.

As we love the rebel, we hate the tout. Pick up the telephone to the Business Software Alliance’s helpline number — 1890 510 010 — to report your employer and you join a citizen class most despised. You do not quite have to seek a new identity abroad, but the opprobrium of colleagues and the threat to career is enough to put any concerned professional off. The BSA has reported in the past that in Ireland it has been unable to get ANY informants to go on the record in an application for a civil search order in a software piracy case. In other press material though it admits that most investigations are initiated with a call to its hotline. So some of us are making the calls, but none are prepared to go on record.

What we understand best is the stick. We loathe the clampers but we love the free parking spaces. Penalty points piss us off, but suddenly we are all driving under the speed limit and for the first time in many years no one dies on the roads over the weekend.

It takes enforcement to change attitudes. The engineering company done for Autodesk licence infringement, the training company in Bray caught with unlicensed Macromedia software cast a cold shadow, but not a long enough one. The 2000 Copyright and Related Rights Act makes the deliberate or negligent misuse of software by a business a criminal offence and extends the penalties to the owners of a business as well as the business itself. Until the directors of companies fear these penalties as they now fear the consequences of say reckless trading, change will be painfully slow.

No financial controller would countenance a recurring net current liability on their books without referring upwards to the directors for guidance. In their turn the directors would be compelled to instruct the company to stop trading or to create a plan that would return the company to a net current asset position.

It is time for IT managers to draw a direct analogy. It might even be appropriate for auditors not to sign off on accounts without asking whether IT systems are fully licensed. By wilfully or negligently allowing the use of unlicensed software in the company they are guilty of professional misconduct and creating a contingent liability for the business. It is their duty to report the situation upwards to the directors or business owners, and to propose a plan to correct the situation; and the directors should understand the penalties both personal and for the business, and act accordingly.

Attitude change remains unlikely without stricter enforcement. More telephone calls to hotlines, more raids on businesses, more public humiliation of offenders, and fewer rebel hearts.

24/04/2003

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