From: jjt@aristotle.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Jack Tuszynski)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish
Subject: Re: Komputery po polsku
Date: 15 Nov 92 16:56:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: elroy.1992Nov15.165635.20944
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA/Caltech


            Proposal for a Polish Software Consortium


                        By Jack Tuszynski




     Currently Poland is becoming a black sheep of the software
industry.  Just like in Hong Kong, where one can purchase a copy
of WordPerfect, Quattro, or DBase for $5, on the Polish border,
one can buy bootleg software for the price of printing the
documentation.  The US Department of Commerce is threatening
trade sanctions on hardware goods if software copyright law is
not respected in Poland.  The whole business of software in
Poland is a mess.  Some time ago, when the networks to Poland
were opening up, a network buddy of mine explained to me that
software piracy was not illegal, because there was no copyright
law in Poland, and it wasn't apparent whether or not there was
going to be a copyright law.  Why should Poland spend money on
software police to go into stores and homes and businesses like
the old ZOMO did in order to protect some foreign software
development investments?  Software copyright in Poland didn't
make sense.
     The Polish Software Consortium makes sense because it would
cost the Polish government very little to implement, and it would
once and for all stop stop piracy, if the foreign companies,
usually US companies, were willing to cooperate.  It would put
the burden of preventing copyright on the software manufacturers,
and not the Polish government, and at very little cost.  How does
it work?  The government of Poland would issue identifiers, say
an N digit number, to each and every software manufacturer and
software user willing to register with the consortium.  The
software identifier would be named PSI for Polish software
identifier, and the member identifier would be named PMI for
Polish member identifier.  It costs very little to keep and print
a list of software and a list of members with a number associated
with each respectively.  Then the government should declare that
this is the Polish copyright law.  That the government will not
go into homes and stores and businesses to search for pirates
because this would be the new technology policy.  Then the Polish
government should release the suggested source code which would
read the PSI and UMI of software, which software manufacturers
could implement into their programs.  No more threats of trade
sanctions could then be issued against Poland.  No more blaming
Polish authorities for the software piracy mess.  No more looking
down on Polish programmers as software hacks.  Each software
manufacturer who wanted to sell software in Poland, would have to
set up a distribution site.   In this distribution site, an
employee would produce a copy of the software with the PSI and
PMI pre-authorized on the media inside the manufacturer's binary
progam.  If a customer bought a copy of a program at a computer
store, he/she would get a reciept.  The next day, a one day
delivery system would supply it, from the distribution center, to
the local computer store.  And the customer could return to the
computer store to pick it up.  One day delivery would be
necessary to ensure that this system would work.  The way that
the consortium software system works is that when run, the
software checks the hard disks for other software that belongs to
the Polish software consortium.  Every piece of software within
the consortium, when run with the psi flag, will produce a PSI. 
Every piece of software within the consortium, when run with the
pmi flag will produce a PMI.  Then the software won't run if the
PMI does not match all of the other PMI's found on the system. 
That is why it is called a consortium, it only works if other
software manufacturers participate.
     The purpose of this protection scheme is not to protect
software, it is to avoid blame and possible trade sanctions for
the Polish government for piracy.  Obviously, people who buy
software for their PC's in Poland, and don't give it away to be
copied, won't have a problem.  But, people who don't buy
software, won't use software sold inside Poland.  If any country
says that Poland is a pirate country, the Polish government can
reply, "yes, but show us one case of piracy in Poland".  If the
accuser does, the Polish government can point out that obviously
this was a piece of software sold in France, not Poland, or sold
outside of the government consortium.  And that the software
manufacturer should therefore blame France and the French
government, and not Poland.  A system is in place inside Poland
to prevent software piracy.