Oracle Corp. has a message for those obsessed with software piracy: relax.
While most of the software industry has begun doggedly tracking down and stamping out instances of illegally copied software, Oracle's top licensing executive said that her company will tolerate scattered instances of piracy if it means keeping an enterprise customer up and running.
"We're not going to turn you off if you use more CPUs [than you've contracted for]," Woods said here during a panel discussion at SoftSummit, the industry's e-licensing forum. "That's not our philosophy. Customers want to pay us. We can't do anything about what people are going to do. We can't go out and sniff them out."
Woods' comments came as an apparent shock to others on the panel, among them e-licensing vendor Macrovision Corp., whose business is providing tools so that software publishers can maximize revenue by preventing cracks and other licensing exploits. After the panel, David Rowley, vice president of business development at Macrovision, approached Woods and arranged a meeting.
Rooting out the last instance of software piracy doesn't make sense in a corporate IT environment, Woods said. In an interview following the panel discussion, she said Oracle has not been able to determine how many of its customers have innocently or maliciously exceeded the terms of the company's licensing agreements; in other words, how much potential revenue Oracle has lost to piracy. However, she added, it makes little difference.
News source: eWeek - Oracle Taking Laid-Back Approach to Piracy
While most of the software industry has begun doggedly tracking down and stamping out instances of illegally copied software, Oracle's top licensing executive said that her company will tolerate scattered instances of piracy if it means keeping an enterprise customer up and running.
"We're not going to turn you off if you use more CPUs [than you've contracted for]," Woods said here during a panel discussion at SoftSummit, the industry's e-licensing forum. "That's not our philosophy. Customers want to pay us. We can't do anything about what people are going to do. We can't go out and sniff them out."
Woods' comments came as an apparent shock to others on the panel, among them e-licensing vendor Macrovision Corp., whose business is providing tools so that software publishers can maximize revenue by preventing cracks and other licensing exploits. After the panel, David Rowley, vice president of business development at Macrovision, approached Woods and arranged a meeting.
Rooting out the last instance of software piracy doesn't make sense in a corporate IT environment, Woods said. In an interview following the panel discussion, she said Oracle has not been able to determine how many of its customers have innocently or maliciously exceeded the terms of the company's licensing agreements; in other words, how much potential revenue Oracle has lost to piracy. However, she added, it makes little difference.
News source: eWeek - Oracle Taking Laid-Back Approach to Piracy
"We run Citibank," Woods said. "It's not like we're going to come in and shut them down. You can either stop using the software or pay for it. It's not that big of a deal."
Oracle doesn't ignore piracy, however. It instead chooses to focus on educating customers on what they can and cannot do with the software. "I believe that most people are good people," Woods said.
Others agreed. "We operate under the philosophy that we … design all these anti-piracy moves with the honest customer in mind," said Drew McManus, director of anti-piracy operations at Adobe Software Inc.
Oracle's laid-back attitude toward software piracy is in sharp contrast to statements made by organizations like the Business Software Alliance, which has claimed that one in four pieces of commercial software used in the United States is illegal. And in a keynote speech on Monday, Macromedia Senior Vice president of Corporate Strategy Tom Hale said that approximately 17 percent of the company's activation efforts used invalid, and possibly forged, software codes.
"Reducing piracy rates can play a key role in economic development," said Robert Holleyman, presidet and chief executive of the BSA, in July. "According to a recent study conducted for the BSA, cutting the rate of software piracy in the United States to 15 percent by the end of 2006 could add $142 billion to the GDP, create more than 130,000 new high-tech jobs and generate an additional $23 billion in tax revenues.
Meanwhile, legislators such as Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., have tried to cut down on peer-to-peer file sharing as a means of combating illegal copying of copyrighted works, mainly music and movies—not software. "I think we need to be consistent," Woods said.
And for everyone who gets the wrong idea, I will clarify.
She doesn't support piracy, however what she is saying is that it doesn't make sense trying to enforce the license to the letter. So for example, if a company had licenses for their server to have 2 CPU's and they actually have 3, it isn't that big of a deal - they aren't going to hunt them down and sue them.
I completely agree for that scenario. Its just not worth it, on any level.
But when it comes to piracy of tens of thousands of copies of a piece of software, or millions of copies of a song, that's a little bit more than just 3 processors on a 2 processor license for _one_ company.
Also, it takes Microsoft's money to run the servers with the updates, and do you honestly think that they want to give it away to illegal users?
People will pay for what they want, and Oracle will get their money from the customers they always have had and customers who will want Oracle as a solution provider
they are the ones that forwarded to FBI IPs of people who activated photoshop with warezed ser#
on one hand oracle's aproach is excelent. those who want to warez, will warez no matter what kind of protection one might implement.
on the other hand, some of oracle larger licenses cost ~$1.5mill....so they can handle piracy..
Because if they start to turn off pple who uses their soft illegaly, they'll lost the only ones that uses that crap!
Last edited by 1612 on 08 Oct 2003 - 23:42
so piracy is not really a big concern to oracle, even there is.
however, i do agree with her logic.
piracy is here to stay, even some companies trying hard to fight.
They are saying "dont worry if you have to bend the rules every now and then, we know how much red tape is involved in getting a new license, especially when it is as expensive as ours"
Have you ever tried to justify spending a few thousand (or hundred thousand) on 1 more license for software which you need NOW? If you have not let me tell you it is HELL. Firstly you need to convince your manager who needs to convince their manager, etc and then you need to actually buy it and wait for the license (and sometimes media) to arrive. When you need it NOW these steps are annoying and time consuming. Oracle are just saying dont worry about it, use it while you are sorting the license, it doesnt matter you are a good customer. In my opinion it is a very good move by them and it is excellent for customer relations! Imagine how many companies will go with them now because they will feel "safer" if they have to "bend" the license for a few weeks while paperwork gets sorted!
Last edited by 9969 on 08 Oct 2003 - 15:24
Oracle doesn't care about warez kiddies because they :
a) wouldn't buy the software in the first place
b) wouldn't understand the software if they did pirate it
c) there simply is no market for home users, so any who do use it are only using it to gain the required skills for a corporate implementation.
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