Trading Standards officers in Cardiff will begin random searches
of businesses later this year in an attempt to stamp out the
illegal use of software.
They will be the first to use
new government powers , to enforce software copyright. The
project could set the pattern for similar programmes throughout the
rest of the UK
Trading Standards Officers and the Federation Against Software
Theft (Fast), an industry body, have presented the pilot programme
as educational rather than punative, but businesses have raised
concerns about the way the powers will be used.
Business organisations were alarmed last year when the
government gave
Trading Standards
(TS) the power to enter workplaces without a warrant or prior
notice, carry out criminal investigations, and hand over offenders
to the authorities for prosecution.
Critics denounced the involvement of Trading Standards as misuse
of public funds and its powers as heavy-handed, unfair and
potentially disruptive to business, particularly smaller
enterprises.
Software licence inspections at large businesses will be a waste
of time and money as most manage software as an asset as part of
standard good business practice, says
Corporate IT Forum chief
executive David Roberts.
And the Federation of Small
Businesses says there are too many government agencies with
power of intrusion and inspection for small business owners to be
able to keep up.
"Often business owners are taken by surprise and may be breaking
the law completely unwittingly without knowing what the issue is,"
says the federation's Simon Briault.
Misuse of resources
The government plan is a misuse of public resources, says Peter
Sommer, cybercrime specialist at the
London School of Economics.
"Trading standards should be protecting the public from
dangerous and fraudulent goods and not protecting the interests of
software companies," he says.
Trading Standards officers in Cardiff are to work with the
Fast to advise around 100
businesses selected for the programme on the legal and security
risks of using pirate software.
Fast is also working with Trading Standards to finalise an
auditing tool to extract information about software installations
in a forensically sound way, which will have to be finalised before
inspections can begin.
This is likely to be an appliance officers can plug into company
computer systems to extract information about software
installations.
Each of the selected companies has been sent a set of guidelines
drawn up with Fast on how to comply with copyright law by checking
what software they have and ensuring it is properly licensed.
The programme is aimed at helping businesses avoid legal action
and they will be notified of inspections to give them time to
prepare, says Handley Brustad, senior Trading Standards officer in
Cardiff.
Although Trading Standards has the power to hand over offenders
for prosecution, Brustad says this will be done only after a full
and detailed investigation has established copyright was infringed
intentionally.
Unintentional
"Where it is done unintentionally or unwittingly, we will help
businesses to get properly licensed and go after the suppliers of
the counterfeit or unlicensed software," he says.
Part of the education programme will be aimed at showing
businesses why it is important for them to know exactly who has
supplied their software.
Brustad defends the involvement of Trading Standards in policing
copyright infringement by saying the agency is charged with
protecting consumers and business, which includes protecting their
intellectual property rights, regardless of the size of
company.
"We can't draw a line and say that when a company gets to a
certain size we are no longer going to protect their product," he
says.
Trading Standards Cardiff and Fast will use the pilot to come up
with a best practice approach which will be shared across the
UK.
It is not certain this will be used as a model for future
policing of software copyright infringement by Trading Standards on
a national basis, but indications are that business will favour a
more measured approach.
Jeremy Beale, head of knowledge content at the
CBI says, "What is important about this initiative is that it
is not just a stick approach, but a carrot and stick approach."
He says it would be wrong to introduce surprise inspections
without first taking steps to ensure businesses know what they need
to know and have the opportunity to comply.
Businesses will be able to judge the positive effects of the
pilot on the Trading Standards national programme of software
inspections only once it begins, but that is not likely before
2009.