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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
One of the first and most-discussed scuffles between the software industry and schools started back in 1996. The Business Software Alliance, which includes Adobe, Intel, IBM and Macromedia as members, received a tip about a Los Angeles school that was supposedly using more than 1,000 copies of unlicensed software programs. The BSA asked the district to investigate, and after auditing the school in 1998, the school district, working with the BSA, discovered several hundred unauthorized copies, including 132 versions of MS-DOS, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
The total cost of the copying could have run into the tens of millions. Each violation carries a potential penalty of $150,000; the fines for just the MS-DOS copies could add up to as much as $19.8 million, not even counting lawyers' fees. The district had already spent loads of cash on technology -- $8 million during the 1995-96 school year alone.
"We're a large school district, but compared to Microsoft, we felt like we're the little guy being beaten up," says David Tokofsky, a member of the Los Angeles school board who has worked in L.A. schools for more than a decade. "The BSA is a CIA-type organization that infiltrated a cash-strapped large entity that's dependent on public funds. Then they told teachers -- who can't get enough services to kids already -- that they were committing crimes. It's like Xerox walking into a major university and arresting students for copying essays."
The school board, however, chose to settle rather than fight. It eventually negotiated a reduced settlement: a $300,000 fine, in addition to which the cash-strapped district had to set aside $3 million to replace pirated materials, and another $1.5 million to create an internal piracy team. The BSA claimed that the punishment could have been much tougher, but its attempt to portray itself as lenient fell on deaf ears. The industry's image as educationally friendly had been tarnished.
"In the court of public opinion, the BSA lost," Tokofsky says.
Microsoft and the rest of the software industry responded to the public relations setback with a two-pronged approach. Individual software companies defended their actions as economically and morally justified, but they also strove to improve community relations. Microsoft had been equipping libraries with Windows computers since the beginning of 1998 -- an initiative that some condemned as self-serving -- and two years later, the Gates Foundation set aside $350 million for schools, particularly small, rural districts. (Technology giveaways are not part of the program, says a Gates Foundation spokesperson, but grant winners often use the money to buy Microsoft products.)
Microsoft and the BSA also expanded their public service campaigns, alerting schools to educational discounts and software management tools aimed at helping administrators keep tabs on their computers. Microsoft even went one step further. While the BSA pours its collections -- $60 million over the past 9 years -- back into enforcement, Microsoft pledged in 1999 to return $25 million (over a five-year period) to needy nonprofits and schools in the areas where it had collected anti-piracy fines.
"It's part of Microsoft's overall approach toward philanthropy," says Devin Driggs, a Microsoft spokesperson. "It's designed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the area of science and technology."
But does the benefit of school giveaways outweigh the costs paid by schools that are the subject of anti-piracy inquires? Relevant statistics on the affected schools are in short supply. The Department of Education doesn't track piracy cases in schools and neither Microsoft nor the BSA would release information on the number or location of schools that have been investigated.
But this much is clear: Los Angeles and Philadelphia are not the only urban, low-income school systems to attract the unwanted attention of Microsoft and the BSA. British teachers in Birmingham -- a heavily working class city in central England -- reportedly received letters last year from Microsoft telling them they were sitting on a "legal timebomb" that they'd better clean up. The San Jose (Calif.) Metropolitan Education District (MED), which teaches vocational classes to about 70,000 adults and high-school students, also tangled with the BSA. And according to Mike Beever, assistant superintendent for business services, the process itself serves as a form of punishment.
