Microsoft has started an amnesty program, offering users of illegal Microsoft software a chance to purchase it legally for large discounts. Law enforcement is upping its efforts with help from the Business Software Alliance, an organization that battles software pirates and other computer criminals on behalf of the world's richest software producers. And, the Lithuanian government is setting out to eradicate illegal software from all government and state-run institutions.
Currently, Lithuanian legislation provides that the tax police and other agents under the Ministry of Internal Affairs have the responsibility to supervise how companies and institutions are using software, said Arturas Jonkus, spokesman for Microsoft's amnesty program.
"It means they will have rights to check private companies and government institutions to see if they are fulfilling the law. In Lithuania it means there is more or less a legal background for fighting software piracy. At the same time it means they will be more active with it," Jonkus said.
According to Jolanta Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene, an attorney and representative for BSA, enforcement is the trick.
"I would say that we have no problems with our law and have had no problems since independence, but the main problem is with enforcement. It's still a new thing in Lithuania. There are not many cases."
A new copyright law has been in force since June with related draft amendments to be voted on in Lithuania's Parliament. Current penalties include hefty fines - up to 3,000 litas ($750) for using illegal programs and up to 25,000 litas in punitive damages - or two years' "compulsory works" for offenders. The draft amendment includes prison sentences for convicted offenders and Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene thinks its chances of passing are good.
"Our government is delighted to accommodate all legal changes in order to comply with the EU," she said.
The law enforcement charge is being led by the tax police's department of intellectual rights protection, a three-person office that concentrates on raiding pirated CD resellers and hard disk loaders, companies that sell new computers loaded with unlicensed software.
Authorities are going to start going after end users, "so there will be a lot more cases in the civil courts," Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene added. Theoretically, this means that the tax police can come barreling into your home demanding to check your computer, but, Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene said, that's improbable.
"It's allowed under the law, but practically, as the piracy rate is so high, they would certainly concentrate on companies. But it doesn't mean that everyone at home can sleep," she said.
For end-users, Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene thinks Microsoft's amnesty plan - involving 60 percent discounts - is an excellent deal. Still, since no end users have been brought to court, they might not want to shell out any money, at least yet.
"I'm not sure that many of them understand the risk of using illegal software," said Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene. "That's why they don't understand the value of this offer."
Microsoft's plan may sound benevolent, but to hundreds, maybe thousands of companies in a country gripped by economic problems, the notion of having to purchase software it already possesses - discount or not - may seem burdensome.
But, Jonkus argues, the Microsoft offer could prove a very affordable alternative to giving the tax police another reason to prosecute one's business.
"I have a company, I know that the tax police will come just to check my accounting," Jonkus said. "At the same time they have the legal right to ask me about my software. It means that everyone in business will face a huge danger if they use pirated software. If you care about the future of your business, it means that you will have to spend a little more money on your IT, but you will have safety."
Compared to the other Baltic states, Lithuania is a little late in terms of large-scale busts. Estonia started its anti-piracy program a year earlier than Lithuania, and had its first raid in June, in which 40 undercover police dressed as Finnish tourists nabbed more than 1,700 CD-ROMS, a Microsoft newsletter reported.
Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene said that changes in policing scuttled Lithuania's raids planned for this summer. Still, Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene adds, Lithuania is the first Baltic country to win a civil judgment against a company selling illegal software.
In September BSA and Microsoft won the first-ever judgment in Lithuania against a Kaunas-based hard disk loader, Baltic Microcomputer Systems.
"The case began at the end of '98 when BMS was raided by the tax police. They were found disk loading new illegal software into a new computer," Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene said.
The company heads claim that the case is not over and it is confident it will not have to pay the $7,875 judgment.
"We haven't paid a dollar for this case, and I don't think we will pay," said the firm's commercial director, Vytautas Sakalauskas. "This was the fault of one of our workers who is no longer working at our company."
Kaminskaite-Pranckeviciene said she has also forced a few Lithuanian companies into settlements, a tack she says is far cheaper for the offending firms.
One sector of Lithuanian computer use where the battle should be less uphill is in government offices. A proposed decree calls for removal of all illegal software from Lithuanian government and state-run institutions.
Martynas Bieliunas, one of the information technology heads within the Ministry of Public Administration Reforms and Local Authorities, claims that only 40 percent of all software used in the state-run domain is illegal.
The decree places the responsibility for clearing the illegal software on the head of each institution, Bieliunas said. To help during a time of budget cuts, the government has cut deals with large software makers like Novell and Microsoft to grant discounts for software purchases.
Bieliunas maintains that the main state institutions such as the ministries and the Parliament make little use of unlicensed software. However, the use of illegal software is much more prevalent in schools, hospitals and other more poorly funded institutions, he reports.
Commenting on the commercial scene, Bieliunas added, "In Lithuania we have different classes of users. Joint stock companies are absolutely using licensed software. The problem is with small and medium-sized enterprises."
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