The European Community has finally reached agreement on legislation designed to protect computer software against piracy. The new measures will require all European Community governments to extend copyright laws to include software, something that seven of the current 12 members do not have provision for. However, the legislation has been drafted to allow for reverse engineering which enables developers to decompile software in order to write compatible products, something that companies like IBM, DEC and Apple Computers were opposed to. The initial proposals called for a ban on reverse engineering, but the European Committee for Interoperable Systems and a number of IBM’s competitors lobbied to ensure that it is permitted, and both Ing C Olivetti and Bull SA say they are satisfied with the eventual compromise. Even IBM acknowledges that a good attempt has been made to establish specific conditions that won’t dilute copyright protection. Community officials expect disputes over reverse engineering to be ongoing, and say that after the accord has become law, they will have to be settled in court. A number of US software companies have pre-empted the European Community by tackling piracy on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in Europe where the problem is more widespread. GEC Plc and Rhone-Poulenc SA of France are being sued for making illegal copies of software and using them in personal computers. The personal computer software industry is losing significant amounts of revenue, estimated at $3,000m per annum in the US, $5,300m in Europe. The industry estimates that around 35% of software running on personal computers in the US is pirated, and in the UK and Germany, the percentage rises to 60% and 80% respectively. The worst offenders are Italy and Israel, and the latter is described as a one-disk country. Eastern European countries are beyond the pale, and one Moscow-based software company says that 99.9% of programs used there are illegal.
