ASPs come under anti-piracy spotlight

FAST's pronouncement may provide some relief for IT directors, as it says it will not look to prosecute users who are infringing licences if they are doing so via an ASP.

Laurence Westbrook, manager of investigations for FAST, said: "In the case of ASPs who have not sorted out their licensing arrangements, through which end users are unwittingly breaking licensing conditions, we would certainly go after the ASP. We always try to go after the beneficiary of software piracy, which in this case would be the ASP, not the IT director."

Westbrook said FAST is concerned that some ASPs might try to profit by misleading users and defrauding software publishers. "We are going to see rogue ASPs developing, which may just set up a website as a front to defraud. It is a traditional scam, and one that we will see with ASPs as well," he said.

He dismissed predictions that the rise of the ASP will spell the end of widespread software piracy as premature, and added there are still financial incentives to use unlicensed software.

The issue is undoubtedly important for the still immature European ASP market as ASPs struggle to get software vendors to sell application licenses in a way that suits their business model.

Tim Pickard, VP of the ASP Industry Consortium (ASPIC), said: "There are ASPs who are hosting services where they have not sorted out the licensing issues. It is very difficult for ASPs, even for those who have tried to work with the software vendors, to get it right."

Euan Davis, services analyst for IDC, said the change for the software industry from a one-off sale to a rental-based economic model is not likely to happen.

He told silicon.com: "Software vendors want to maintain the status quo, but they will have to change, because at the moment the ASP is taking all the financial and legal risk."

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