Stop Warez the FAST way

Organisations such as the American Business Software Alliance and the Business Software Association of Australia have long been involved in a losing battle against software piracy. Simply put, the Web is just too big to track and shut down every

Organisations such as the American Business Software Alliance and the Business Software Association of Australia have long been involved in a losing battle against software piracy. Simply put, the Web is just too big to track and shut down every single Warez site. For each site that is found and shut down, ten more spring up in its place.

The main battle in tracking Internet-based software piracy is finding the actual distribution points – Websites, FTP sites, newsgroups and the like. However, a new Internet Explorer plug-in from the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) could help overcome difficulties associated with keeping track of Warez Websites.

FASTs plug-in allows users who come across a Warez websites to report the URLs – along with their name if they so chose – by pushing a button on the IE taskbar. Once said button is pushed, FASTs plug-in takes a snapshot of the offending site and its URL which is then sent back to a central server.

While the new software may remove one barrier to combating Warez, it significantly worsens another. Assuming the plug-in is popular among Web users, the amount of Warez reports could rise exponentially in a very short time. Considering the staffing problems anti-piracy groups have in validating and taking action against the amount of claims they currently receive, FASTs software could prove a real strain on resources. It's also worth noting that the plug-in, if successful, could eventually come bundled by default with Internet Explorer – making the task of validating and taking action against real Warez Websites an almost insurmountable task.

If this situation comes to pass, one likely solution organisations such as the BSAA could take is to send out threatening letters en-masse to all reported Websites. This solution is highly flawed and will only serve to lessen the already lackluster reputation of such organisations among computer users. However, considering the amount of regard anti-piracy groups have shown IT users so far (DMCA, SSSCA, etcetera), further damage to reputations will most likely not be considered in any eventual solutions.