Fast.org.uk
Title
The Federation Against Software Theft
Description
Over the last five years, companies have paid out £1.8m in fines to the Business Software Alliance for using unlicensed software and in excess of £5.5m have been recovered as a result of FAST activities.
The Federation Against Software Theft (The Federation) was set up in 1984 by the British Computer Society's Copyright Committee. It was the world's first anti-software piracy organisation working to protect the intellectual property rights of software publishers. Its' first action was to raise the awareness of software piracy and to lobby Parliament for changes in the Copyright Act 1956 to reflect the needs of software authors and publishers. This campaign was successful and it has since been able to influence other legislation that impacts on the proper safeguarding of software. The work of The Federation in this area has directly influenced the way that software copyright law and investigations are carried out in many other countries.
It is also unique in that it is the only association in the world that represents both software publishers and end users. All the other associations concerned with software compliance represent software publishers only and therefore, have an approach that is not geared towards proactively helping organisations and end users who are actually responsible for managing software.
