This Friday and the week coming up, IS managers in Delhi,
Chennai and Mumbai may be heading to the prisons rather than to their homes at
the end of the day. Be prepared and let your family know what they should do
in such an event.
In today's difficult world, surviving in Business is hard.
There is Competition that keeps pulling down the prices, Consumerism
that keeps increasing the costs and the two together squeezing the profit
margins and making the life of Corporate Managers a real hell.
In order to survive, your Company might have already
cut jobs, froze wages and foregone perks. But beware that life may get tougher
if in this "Economy" process, your CEO or Finance Manager has unknowingly
landed you in a spot which can take you, the IS manager straight to the
central prison. May be you will have your CEO for company, or he may be already
having an anticipatory bail in his pockets.
How many times you have tried to sneak through a red
traffic signal when you think there is no Policemen around?, only to be caught
round the corner and forced to shell out the fine? ..Rather than the quantum
of fine, perhaps what could have hurt you more been the delay caused by the
interruption which could cause you miss a flight or start a key business
meeting with an apology for the delay. In such circumstances, you must have
cursed yourselves, why you were not wise before the event.
Similarly, in the financial crunch situation that your
Company has come to face, it is possible that your company has not made
payments for software licenses or resorted to using unlicensed software during
the course of its business.
Software industry in India, particularly in Chennai and
Bangalore should not forget the experience of Radiant Software which was
accused of having used Oracle software in violation of the licensing terms
resulting in two of its branch managers being jailed and the top executives
being threatened arrest. The inept handling of the issue both before and after
the allegation, by the Company's legal advisors, saw to it that when the
incident culminated, Radiant Software was so battered and bruised that it had
to bow out of the market.
Now there has been a friendly leak in the press to warn
business entities in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi that Adobe is planning to
organize a series of raids in these cities targeting Companies and
Educational institutions that may be using Adobe products without appropriate
licenses. Multimedia Software Development Companies, Training Centres,
Advertising Agencies, Publishing Houses, Web Designing Companies, etc
will be the prime targets of such a ride.
Those who are not aware of what this means must remember
that it was Adobe that caused the Russian Software Developer, Mr Dmitry
Sklyarov to cool his heels in US prisons after landing there to speak in a
seminar.
If these business entities donot take adequate safeguards,
many of them may have to close shops and the employees working there in will
soon be in the market for jobs. Unfortunately, the professional IS managers
and CEO s will have to face accountability for use of what will be termed as
"Pirated Software" and face the legal consequences. It must be emphasised,
that, as in the case of the Oracle-Radiant Software dispute, what could be
termed as "Piracy" may just be that your license is for using the software on
20 computers and you have unfortunately loaded it on 21 computers.
naavi.org has been highlighting the need for Cyber Law
Compliancy as a part of Corporate strategy and there is no better time for
Companies to realize that the days when they have to pay dearly for
their complacency, ignorance or adventurism in ignoring the need for Cyber Law
Compliancy are near.
Naavi
June 13, 2002
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