Average Users Monthly Vol 1 Issue 1 - FILE 4
Product Review: SPAUDIT v2.8
Software Publishers Association
1730 M Street - NW - Suite 700
Washington, DC - 20036
(202) 452-1600
Reviewed by: Todd Clayton
Ever wondered if there is any commercial software on your computer that really shouldn't be there? Well, call up the Software Publishers Association (SPA) and order your free self-audit kit! SPAUDIT will search your hard drive for files that are part of hundreds of commercial software packages.
Whats included: The self-audit kit comes with many pamphlets answering frequently asked questions (FAQs) as well as informing you of the ethics and legalities of pirating versus buying software. The main point that these texts seem to try to put across is that pirating is illegal (no suprises there) but they also state that a majority of "pirates" don't even know that they're breaking the law. "It's so simple, it doesn't seem like and wrong is being done." was a quote from "Is it okay to copy my colleague's software?"
As a test,, I ran the program to see what it would come up with.
Here is the resulting pif.fil outputted by the software after searching my system.
"1","MSDOS.SYS",2,"Microsoft DOS","Microsoft Corporation"
"1","NC.EXE",1,"The Norton Commander","Symantec Corporation"
Obviously "Microsoft DOS" is going to show up, who uses PC-DOS these days anyhow? I purchased this over a year ago as an upgrade from my MS-DOS 3.3 system. The Norton Commander was also purchased after viewing a copy on a friends computer.
Here's another example, this one shown in a readme file found on the diskette in the kit.
Example:
"DAVE","IBMDOS.COM",1,"IBM DOS","IBM Corp"
"DAVE","123.EXE",2,"Lotus 1-2-3","Lotus"
"PETE","IBMDOS.COM",1,"IBM DOS","IBM Corporation"
Dave's machine has 1 copy of DOS, and 2 copies of 1-2-3 from Lotus Development. Pete's machine has 1 copy of DOS.
Overall, the self-audit kit steers away from most of the SPA's usual scare tactics, and presents an informative and useful guide for both personal and business use. If you're not sure whether you're breaking the law or not, call up SPA and order a kit. Simple as that.
