Brea Store Sued for Allegedly Renting Software Programs
A group of large software companies filed lawsuits this week accusing a Brea software store and five others across the country of illegally renting computer programs to customers.
By allegedly renting software for a fraction of regular sales prices, View Plus Software in Brea has violated a 5-year-old federal law designed to curb piracy in the software industry, according to a suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.
The suits were brought by a group of large software publishers, including Adobe Systems Inc., Broderbund Software Inc. and Symantec Corp. The companies are members of the Software Publishers Assn., a Washington-based trade organization that organized the legal salvo.
Ken Wasch, president of the association, said that rentals undercut sales by encouraging customers to borrow software and make illicit copies of programs on their home computers. Such rentals are illegal when the store does not have permission from the publisher of the software, he said.
“We struggled for five years to get Congress to pass legislation making it illegal to rent software,” Wasch said. “Everyone who owns a personal computer has all the equipment he or she needs to make a perfect copy. Software rentals facilitate piracy.”
Cindy Horowitz, who is identified in the suits as the owner of View Plus, was not available for comment. Store employees who asked to remain anonymous insisted that the company does not rent software, but they described a sales policy that software industry officials claim is a rental program in disguise.
After paying a membership fee of $10, customers pay a small deposit, ranging from $5 to $25, that entitles them to take a program home for a two-day trial.
“If you like it, you pay off the balance,” one View Plus employee said. “But if you don’t want it, you’re allowed to return it, and all you forfeit is the deposit.”
He declined to say how many customers decide to keep the software and pay full price.
Wasch said that other stores have tried similar strategies.
“Most people take [the software] home and copy it, and the store knows it,” said Wasch, who added that the View Plus policy mirrors the practices of a store in New York that was forced to pay $150,000 after losing a similar suit filed by the association in 1993.
The latest suits were filed after the association had received tips about the six stores and hired investigators to pose as customers, Wasch said. The other stores are in North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and Virginia.
