newsbytes@clarinet.com (02/04/90)
CAUSEWAY BAY, HONGKONG, 1990 JAN 30 (NB) -- Software piracy has long been a hot topic and never more so than in Hongkong. Perhaps that statement should be widened somewhat to cover much of the Far East. The true capital of computer piracy for the last decade and more has been Taiwan, but to people all over the world mere mention of piracy in relation to software means one particular building. The Golden Shopping Centre in Shamshiupo is not very large. It is a rather nondescript building in an modest suburb incorporating a cinema in one corner and a basement, ground floor and one other story of shopping arcades, most of them dedicated to computers and associated hardware, software and manuals. These days most of the shops display and sell genuine goods, but many are still able to supply illicit copies from a backroom or a nearby storeroom. Repeated raids by the Customs and Excise Department, largely instigated by US software houses, and subsequent prosecutions have put some operators out of business and forced others to assume at least an appearance of respectability. But in the process a great deal of resentment has been created among perfectly legitimate computer users. Perhaps the most powerful local argument against the Customs raids is that taxpayers' money is being squandered to protect the private interests of a handful of US companies. There is a continuing public debate through newspaper correspondence columns on the rights and wrongs of piracy. The industry insists that its rights are being infringed and that it is losing millions of Hongkong dollars to the pirates. The customers, who have next to no consumer protection in Hongkong, reply that they only buy pirate software to provide themselves with the services not supplied locally by the companies. They point out that they have to pay much higher prices for software than the US full list price, yet there are no facilities for them to check out programs for suitability to their needs and, if they do eventually buy, they are given no backup support. The pirates are seen to fulfill at least one of the potential buyer's needs. You can buy a pirated program and manual, try the package out and if it doesn't come up to scratch, ditch it. On the other hand, many people have bought the genuine article after finding it did satisfy their needs. This process is particularly important outside the US. All too many programs ignore the fact that there is a big wide world outside the narrow confines of the USA. Software which is excellent in principle may totally ignore the reality that not everybody uses the US dollar, or that US dollar data fields are too short to hold the data. Think of the Japanese yen, the Italian lira, the Thai Baht or even the Hongkong dollar at 7.8:1 against its US counterpart. A person buying a package that does not cater to his currency requirements would end up wasting money on a useless purchase. There are many Australian and European software packages now available that do recognize the need for flexibility in such matters as currency fields. Many of them are equal to or better than their American counterparts and are invariably only a fraction of the price. Interestingly, it is rare to see pirated versions of any of these on sale at Golden Shopping Centre. Some US word processing programs still ignore the fact that American spelling is not universal. A dictionary is useless unless it speaks your language. In all too many cases the only way a buyer can find out if a WP package provides an English English dictionary is to buy it, or a pirated copy. Frequently an English dictionary is available - but only as an optional extra. Who can blame the customer for shopping elsewhere - assuming he hasn't already spent his hard-earned money on a program that can't check his spelling properly because he didn't have the sense to try out an illicit copy first? What it all comes down to is arrogance on the part of all too many software publishers. They fail to provide their potential customers with the information and backup needed to make viable an investment in their software, and then complain when those customers try to check matters out for themselves. All this leaves out the question of students. Until now there has been almost no attempt by the major software publishers to address the needs of Hongkong students. Schools, colleges and the students themselves invariably have to pay the full price for software and abide by all the finer licencing conditions - or buy a $4 pirate copy. There are at last signs that the companies are coming to their senses and making special arrangements for educational institutions and their students. In the meantime, thousands of students have bought pirated software, learned from it, evaluated it and either thrown it away or proselytised on its behalf when they have graduated and gone into business. This process is not confined to students, however. Many real users have started off with pirated copies for the reasons mentioned earlier. No one whose livelihood or business depends on the reliability of computer software entrusts it in the long run to a pirate copy. That may be alright as long as the program works. But what happens when it crashes? On the other hand, who in his right senses would spend several hundred or even thousands of dollars on an untried product for which no demonstration facilities are available? Hongkong is fairly typical of the Far East. When buying software, you are on your own. Chances are the dealer has no stock of the program you want. He will order it for you, at a cost far higher than the full US list price and with a delivery time, if you are lucky, of a month. Once it has arrived, if anything goes wrong, your only recourse is to spend money on an international phone call to the US publisher. In the meantime, your business languishes. Then, when a later version comes out, you are foolish enough to expect to be able to take advantage of the publisher's upgrade offer. You go to the local dealer. "Yes we can upgrade this for you. You must return the original discs and manuals and we will get the new version for you sometime." This is no exaggeration. One prominent Hongkong businessman went through this a year ago with a famous product. At the local distributor he ran into a brick wall. Eventually from pure frustration he contacted the US principal via The Source. In no time at all, the latest version was on its way to him, together with other, complimentary, software. The Hongkong distributor was quickly replaced by a competitor. Two weeks ago the same man had a similar experience with another company's product. In this case, he was quoted a price for an upgrade which was considerably more expensive than the normal retail price for the original product, already far above the US price. The present writer recently tried to upgrade a programming package. The original discs had to be returned. A delivery time of three weeks was quoted. More than six weeks later it had to be chased up. When it did arrive, it lacked the essential manuals. After another month of fruitless waiting, a message via Genie to Borland International brought an immediate and generous response. The following is a message on the HongKong Computer Society's BBS from a businessman to the author on a similar occurrence. Quote: "I agree completely, I wrote to XXXX XXXXXXX to upgrade from Turbo C 1.5 to Ver. 2.0 Professional. They replied that I would have to send manual and disks back to them at Singapore then pay exorbitant freight charges for shipping the upgrade. I thought that this was a load of nonsense and wrote directly to Borland in the States. Within 10 days I received the software (complete package - assembler/compiler/debugger) charged to my Visa card. The savings on doing it this way was US$55- on the price quoted by XXXX XXXXXXX. Borland has my vote every time for good support. As for local dealers, I just don't want to know. If I get bad service from a company in the States there are plenty of magazines to write complaining letters to, here nobody cares, it is definitely a case of "caveat emptor!" Borland International, needless to add, is not among the companies creating such a fuss because their overpriced products are being pirated. If the software industry really wishes to put the pirates out of business, the onus is on them to make their wares affordable; to ensure that, wherever in the world they are sold, there are adequate demonstration facilities and that buyers are assured of fast and efficient locally based support and upgrade facilities. Support need not be free of charge. If an expensive product does the job for which it was bought, a justly priced support contract would not be rejected by any reasonable customer. But to expect anyone to commit their money to an untried product at an artificially-high price and with no guarantee of help when things go wrong is to ensure a long life for the pirates. The fact is that the "Pirates" have provided an invaluable service, not only to computer users, but to the industry, too. They have stepped into the breach when the industry has ignored its responsibilities. They have helped some purchasers avoid unsuitable software and they have introduced many others to products which they have eventually bought through legitimate channels. Most important of all, they have helped meet the needs of the students who will be tomorrow's decision makers but who have been all but ignored by the industry mandarins. Finally, those extravagant claims by some sectors of the industry about those lost millions. The truth, Gentlemen, is that most of the people buying those pirated copies bought them to learn, did not want them for real business use, could not have afforded the genuine articles and would never have bought them, even if they could afford then, having tried the pirated versions. (Norman Wingrove/11900203)