Rip up that shrink-wrap licence
Published: 18 Sep 2002 11:22 BST
The price of software is singled out as a major problem in developing countries. It is, says the Commission, the principal reason for illicit copying. I can believe that, having worked in a developing country for an NGO that had no option but to break shrink-wrap licence agreements and install a single piece of software on several Macs. Given the choice between honouring a software shrink-wrap contract and producing information on how to avoid typhoid to people living in some of the remotest regions on earth, I would happily break the contract every time.
And this is exactly what the Commission on IP Rights recommends: governments should declare many of the more onerous shrink-wrap licences void.
A good example of an onerous shrink-wrap licence is -- you guessed it -- the one that comes wrapped around Windows. Microsoft discovered just what people think of its shrink-wrap licence when in July 2001 when it faced widespread criticism for threatening legal action against Australian charity PCs for Kids, which refurbished old computers for disadvantaged children and was re-installing Windows without paying a new licence fee to Microsoft (which at the time by the way had some $40bn in cash in the bank).
Realising it was in for a public relations hiding, Microsoft relented and said it would provide 150 packs of Windows 95 and ten refurbished computers which it claimed was worth a total of AU$65,000 (£22,000) as a "gesture of goodwill" to Australian charity organisations. Just how ten old PCs and 150 copies of an outdated operating system that is not even sold any more could possible be worth £22,000 is quite beyond me. Windows 95 was obsolete even in 2001; Microsoft did not want to sell it any more, and if it had not provided these would the charities have spent £22,000 minus the cost of ten PCs on newer versions of Windows? Probably not.
Obviously Australia is not a developing nation, but this episode illustrates the problem with the price of software in developing nations: that many people -- and particularly those involved in development work, such as NGOs -- simply cannot afford to buy it. Software that is illicitly copied in such circumstances does not detract from the profits of the software industry because the people doing the copying would never be able to pay the real price of the software. The software company concerned would simply have fewer users.
The software industry would do well to learn from other groups that provide services to developing nations. Take the voluntary sector, which is an important provider of skills to the developing world; a widely used rule of thumb here is that professionals, who would command good salaries in the West, are paid the same wage while working abroad as an average teacher in the area where they work.
It would be refreshing to see a major software company with the courage to price its products according to the means of the people in the area in which the software is being sold. Of course, there are dangers in such a system -- some of this cheap software would almost certainly find its way back to rich nations, and that would indeed hurt the profits of the company concerned. But then there are always those shrink-wrap licences which can be used to curb such activity and which are, of course, much more easily enforceable in rich nations.
What it boils to is that necessity is the mother of invention. To date, the invention has been no more than figuring out how to illicitly copy software. But increasingly, invention is likely to mean developing open-source alternatives.
The longer it takes software companies to wake up to the benefits they stand to reap from taking a socially responsible attitude to the developing world, the more developing nations and their nationals will turn to open source. This is good for the people, but not so good for the software companies who will only be able to look forward to more and better cheap alternatives to their products.
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