Last week, ITWeb`s IT director unearthed his copy of Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to load onto his upgraded machine. To his surprise, he discovered that the disc was damaged. He proceeded to telephone the company he purchased it from, to find out what course of action he should take to get it replaced.
This sparked off a bout of indignant discussion about what it is you are actually purchasing when you buy a software CD.
Georgina Guedes, Journalist, ITWeb
He was told that since he had purchased the software more than eight months ago, the responsibility didn`t lie with the reseller, and that while it was unlikely that anything could be done, his best approach would be to take it up with Adobe. This sparked off a bout of indignant discussion about what it is you are actually purchasing when you buy a software CD.
An Adobe product manager initially felt the problem was ours to deal with. "It is the clients` responsibility to backup and insure their software. At this point in time, it is a very difficult policy. The product was purchased more than eight months ago, and he cannot prove that the disc was damaged then. Adobe South Africa will probably replace the disc, but we do not make backup copies on behalf of our clients.
"What if everything burns down?" he says. "The software agreement might also burn, what would you do then? You should have software insurance. The software will then be replaced at no cost because the insurance company will pay out."
But surely, you are not purchasing the intellectual property for yourself, because if that were the case, you would then hold the rights to that property, and other people would have to license its use from you. It then follows that if you are only purchasing the right to use the software, the CD on which it comes is merely a vessel for delivery. If that CD is damaged, you still retain the rights that you purchased at the outset.
"A CD is literally the installation medium," agrees Mark Reynolds, group licensing compliance manager at Microsoft. "The purchase of a software licence is the right to use the software. In an instance where the disc is damaged, we will replace it at no charge, or a nominal charge relating to the cost of the CD."
And fortunately for our IT director, Adobe concurs. "You can`t buy intellectual property, because this would mean that in theory you could sell it," says Andrew Lindstrom, regional manager for Adobe Systems, Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands. "You buy the right to use the software for as long as you like."
He adds that in the case of the CD being damaged, Adobe would be only too happy to help out. "Just present the original damaged copy and an invoice, and you wouldn`t need to pay for anything."
Lindstrom explains that the only area in which there might be any kind of problem would be in the instance of an older product. "It can be very difficult to get hold of a copy to replace an obsolete CD," he says.
Reynolds also points out that while the formal mechanism for replacing a CD is through Microsoft, customers can go through the resellers. This process is actually formalised in the product guarantees and the product licence agreement.
"All members of the Business Software Alliance are open and honest and there to help the end-user who has purchased a licence to use software," affirms Lindstrom.
So it seems that while you might encounter resistance from your reseller, software distributors do acknowledge that you have invested a significant amount of money in a software licence, and will be only too happy to replace the damaged installation medium for you.
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