Date: 29 Apr 93 21:31:10 EDT
From: Gordon Meyer <72307.1502@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: File 2--SPA Needs A Different Direction

Michael Alexander, Editor in Chief and Associate Publisher of
INFOSECURITY NEWS had some interesting comments about the SPA in his
May/June editorial.  Here are excerpts, for the full remarks refer to
page 7.

Several years ago I attended the first meeting of the Software
Publishers Association, which was being held during the Winter
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas... I recall little about that
initial meeting other than the fact that it was not particularly well
organized. Based on the low turnout, ... I wrote a small article about
the meeting and I think I suggested that the software industry had
little need for the proposed association.

Obviously I was wrong.  The SPA has grown to more than 1,000 members
in the past eight years and has become a powerful force in the
industry. The SPA has also be come known as the "Software Police" as a
result of is raids against copyright infringers and software pirates.

...

Few people would argue with the fact that all software publishers
should be compensated fairly for their products and that copyright
laws must be protected on ethical and financial grounds.

However, I believe that the SPA's much-publicized raids on businesses
whose users are allegedly making unauthorized copies of software do
little to advance the cause of information systems security. Any
infosecurity practitioner will tell you that fear, intimidation and
threats do not make for better security. What works is education,
communication and cooperation.

The vast majority of infosecurity professionals are aware of the
pitfalls of copyright infringement and are working diligently to
control the problem within their organizations. The SPA itself
confirms that the problem of copyright in the US is declining.  Thus
it is time for the SPA to put its clout to more productive use.

...

One of the first things the SPA should do is to withdraw its current
print ads, such as the ones depicting users behind bars. These ads are
in poor taste and insulting both to infosecurity professionals and to
the people who provide the billions in revenues that the SPA's members
receive.

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