The Business Software Association of Australia has announced that the time for warnings is over. It says illegal copying of software costs its members $400 million a year in Australia. It will now spend 75 per cent, rather than 50 per cent, of its Budget on litigation, cutting education from 50 to 25 per cent.
It will raid premises under what are called Anton-Piller court orders which enable the raiders to seize evidence, which can mean seizing computers. The BSAA is willing to pay a $2500 reward to people who dob in a pirate.
On its face it seems that the software publishers are like the British Navy, patrolling the seas and upholding the law by boarding parties if necessary, and that the copiers are flying the Jolly Roger.
Well, the British Navy has a long history of defending unjustifiable monopolies which enrich the few at the expense of the many. Now the software publishers are self-righteously going on the warpath to defend the plunder they make under a far too-generous monopoly.
The copyright monopoly which runs until 50 years after the author’s death, was originally there to give authors (and their children) reasonable return for their written work, and as the works of, say, Dickens and Wordsworth show, to ensure the public ultimately gets a return when the works come into the public domain.
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