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once said that if there was any money in writing bugs, Bulgaria would be one of the richest countries in Europe. As there was not a red cent to be earned from the things, Bulgaria instead remained one of the poorest.

At 5.30 that afternoon, Tuesday 12 December 1989, the package from PC Business World arrived. As promised it contained a diskette, of the sort sent out to the magazine's readers; it also contained a copy of a blue instruction leaflet that had accompanied the diskette.

Jim examined the leaflet closely. 'Read this license agreement carefully [and] if you do not agree with the terms and conditions . . . do not use the software,' it began. It then stated that the program on the diskette was leased to operators for either 365 uses at a price of $189, or the lifetime of their hard disk at a price of $389. 'PC Cyborg Corporation,' it continued, 'also reserved the rights to use program mechanisms to ensure termination of the use of the program . . . [and] . . . these mechanisms will adversely effect [sic] other program applications.'

So far, Jim thought, it read much like a normal licence agreement. The bit about 'adversely effect other program applications' was worrisome, though.

He read on. Further down in the small text on the leaflet was a paragraph that made him sit up. 'You are advised of the most serious consequences of your failure to abide by the terms of this license agreement: your conscience may haunt you for the rest of your life . . . and your computer will stop functioning normally [authors' italics].'

This was, Jim thought, carrying the concept of a licensing agreement too far. Licensing software was a perfectly normal business practice. So were threats, but reputable software houses limited those to dark hints that unauthorized users of their products would be prosecuted for 'copyright infringement'. This was different: the distributors of this diskette threatened that unauthorized users would find that their computers would cease functioning.

Even more unusually, the diskette had been sent out like junk mail, unrequested, to computer users around the country, inviting them to run it on their machines. It was already established that whoever had distributed the diskettes had bought PC Business

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