.Markku Reunanen.

Contemporary Accounts on Early Finnish Software Piracy

February 24th, 2024

Since I happen to have access to the archive of the Finnish MikroBitti computer magazine, which was extremely influential among the 1980s home computer hobbyists, I’ve skimmed through the 1980s’ issues both as pastime and for an upcoming article. One of the topics I was looking into was software piracy, already rampant by the mid-1980s. At that time there was effectively no legislation concerning software for that matter, so what looks like illegal activity from today’s perspective might actually have been perfectly fine. MikroBitti, too, addressed the topic multiple times, plus there were letters to the editor, so as a little project I decided to translate some of them to provide foreigners a glimpse of how things were discussed here:

• The copyright law applies to home computer hobbyists too – a well-known attack by a Finnish Commodore representative (MikroBitti 4/1984).
• Are people copying software criminals? – the answer from the editor in chief (MikroBitti 1/1985).
• Limited copying of software is legal – another answer which points out false claims (MikroBitti 2/1985).
• Should I copy software? – a horror story where there were legal consequences (MikroBitti 12/1988).
• The Secrets of the Computer Underground – a curious, much later description of the warez scene (MikroBitti 12/1989).
• And as a bonus PIRACY Right or Wrong from the short-lived Mega-X hobbyist magazine (Mega-X 1/1989).

Enjoy while it’s hot (stuff) – I don’t own any rights to these texts, so theoretically someone could ask to take them down. Not very likely, though, since they’re more than thirty years old and the publisher was not Nintendo 🙂 There might be some typos or grammatical errors, but all in all the texts should be well legible.

edit: One more addition. Many Faces of the Software Bandit (Printti 8/1985).

edit2: And another. Jesse Jameses are a different thing (Printti 8/1985).

edit3: And yet one more. Crime Is Widespread in the IT World (Printti 1/1985).

Filed under: demoskene,retro,tutkimus