Why the BSA Is Less Reviled Than the RIAA 371
Hugh Pickens writes "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a trade group established in 1988 representing a number of the world's largest software makers whose principal activity is trying to stop copyright infringement of software produced by its members, performing roughly the same function for the software industry that the RIAA performs for the music industry. Yet, as Bill Patry, author of a 7-volume treatise on US copyright law and currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, notes on his blog the BSA is a 'far less unpopular organization' than the RIAA because there are three key differences between the BSA's campaigns and the RIAA's. First, BSA's members have always offered their products for sale to the public, through any channel that wants to sell them. Second, BSA's members are consumer-oriented; they try to develop products that respond to consumers' needs, and not, the reverse: focusing on what they want to sell to consumers. Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws. 'I think the fact that the public does not object to BSA's campaign proves my point [that]... people do not want things for free; they are willing to pay for them,' writes Patry. 'It should not be surprising that when consumers are not treated with respect, they react negatively. That's something the software industry learned long ago, and that's why people don't object to the BSA's enforcement campaign.'"
Don't bite the hand that feeds you (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it also possible that a significant volume of the online debate over the years against the RIAA/MPAA has been by technologically savvy folks, say perhaps people in IT? And why would these people want to bite the hand that feeds them, their own software alliance?
I am not so sure the BSA's actions to date are 100% responsible for the muted reaction to their approach to software piracy. I postulate that folks that want to sell software are more likely to support them, and the folks that want to sell CDs and Movies simply aren't in a position to influence the debate the way IT folks are.
Value of music vs value of software (Score:4, Interesting)
Software has an intrinsic value. To a business, the return on investment from a piece of software is something that can be measured. Spreadsheet software, for example, makes accounting many times easier and cheaper than trying to keep the books in books.
But music (and to a lesser degree video) has no intrinsic value. It is something enjoyed passing time. Like a frisbee at the park or a cup holder in a car. It's something that is nice to have but ultimately unnecessary.
If anti-copyright proponents would be unhypocritical, they would demand that software be downloadable for "sharing" among friends. That they only make this claim for music shows and video shows that there is a fundamental difference between software and music in their minds. I attribute this to the ephemeral nature of music, something which can be enjoyed but in the end has no real value.
Re:Less sympathy for companies (Score:4, Interesting)
The BSA is busting kids that share 5800 NDS roms. They are also going after the Big Warez sharers.
But they mostly focus on businesses because a company will roll over and play dead for them 99% of the time. It's like free money for them.
Re:Less sympathy for companies (Score:5, Interesting)
BSA's different tactics give it a lower profile (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the BSA are largely less hated because it is less well known than the RIAA. The fact that it rarely targets individuals is probably part of this. If you don't run a small-to-medium sized business, the BSA are unlikely to really be on your radar. But small business owners who've interacted with the BSA [networkworld.com] hate them at least as much as your average Slashdot reader hates the RIAA.
Re:Less sympathy for companies (Score:5, Interesting)
The BSA's tactic of requiring companies to be audited and then pay large amounts for any product that they can't prove that they own makes them pretty unpopular.
They seem to be a pretty popular way for disgruntled IT employees to screw over their employer though. Every BSA audit I've ever heard of or been involved in came about because of some employee or ex-employee with an axe to grind.
I've always wondered what happens if you refuse to let them onto your property. Presumably their only recourse would be to sue you and obtain access to your computer systems through the discovery process. Given the "speed" with which the court system moves I wonder if you could have the whole operation switched over an open source movement by the time it reached that point?
Alternatively what happens if you claim trade secrets or privacy restrictions (HIPAA?) on your computer system?
Missed one. (Score:3, Interesting)
Non-commercial use of copyrighted works (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Less sympathy for companies (Score:2, Interesting)
Given the "speed" with which the court system moves I wonder if you could have the whole operation switched over an open source movement by the time it reached that point?
That would cause bigger legal problems, as the legal hold that comes with discovery prevents you from doing exactly that. Removing the traces of infringement by removing the closed source software and installing open source would be tampering and the courts don't take kindly to that.
Also, while the cases themselves take a while, discovery is usually pretty punctual, all things compared.
Re:Less sympathy for companies (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding is that if you refuse them access, they'll show up with a sheriff and a court order allowing them access.
We went through one of Microsoft's SAM not-an-audit-but-really-an-audit last spring. I had taken over the tech position, and everything had been in a bloody mess. Worse, most of the licenses had belonged to the organization which the organization I work for had bought. Naturally, there were many supposed licenses which the former tech guy had assured me existed which did not exist, and I ended up uninstalling about fifteen copies of Office 2003 Pro because I simply could not find any evidence that they had been purchased. Fortunately I had several copies of Office Basic and the like (mainly they need Outlook anyways), so I managed to keep within the licenses that I actually had physical evidence of.
Of course, the MS SAM guys are pricks. There was about two months of back-and-forth, and in the end my "rep" (or so this turkey insisted he was) claimed that five of my Server 2003 CALs weren't strictly valid because they were put on a volume license version of Server 2003, and they were retail CALs, and I was either going to have to change them to device CALs or buy five new ones through volume licensing.
At that point I got really pissed off and basically told the guy he was just trying to nitpick to try to get me to spend a couple of hundred bucks for licenses that we already owned, and for which Microsoft had already been paid. The guy did back off, though I think he was pretty pissed that he hadn't got a dime out of us. I in fact did need more licenses for a file server, but after my experience with Microsoft's license extortion department, I said "fuck it", installed a Samba member server, finally mastered Posix-to-Windows ACL mapping, and basically could give a shit. I'm down to one DC per location, enough to handle authentication and roaming profiles, I've installed OpenOffice wherever I can, and basically have no intention of buying any more MS products.
Re:Don't bite the hand that feeds you (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope, I'm someone who wants to sell software, and I think their audit tactics are extremely slimy, and should be illegal. Generally speaking the difference is that software people know that even though people will pirate their stuff, they'll do okay anyway, because plenty of people will pay for it. The company I work for has fantastic customer support, and we fix problems on a dime. Our customers would, frankly, be crazy to pirate from us. And I doubt that a BSA audit would identify a pirated copy of our software anyway, since it's not a Windows package.
Screw the other guy (Score:2, Interesting)
Some things they don't tell you (Score:5, Interesting)
Every member company of BSA has been found to have 'unauthorized software' [citation needed] but of course those aren't reported to the media like the rest.
I did asset and software management for 15 years before finally being able to dump the whole mess on someone else. Every license was tied to a purchase order and every purchase order was tied to a machine. Whenever we got a new Microsoft rep (since they were the majority of our products) I would show them the huge lateral filing cabinets with every license in order. Yeah, they're going to try to pull an audit on us.
I did get a call from the Microsoft 'legal' department once trying to tell us that we didn't have enough Exchange licenses for a company our size. When I asked which company, since we had 15 affiliates, they couldn't tell me. And when I told them that only 2 affiliates used Exchange and the rest were Lotus Notes they got truly confused. At which point I essentially told them to fuck off until they could get their facts straight. Surprisingly I never heard back.
Yes, the BSA uses disgruntled employees as their main source of information and they pay for it. They're evil and while I have no pity for companies that buy one license and install on fifty machines the BSA tactics and fine structure completely suck.
Atleast the fines make sense with BSA (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe if the RIAA would sue for reasonable amounts, say $3 / song or something like that they'd be taken a bit more seriously.
I mention $3 only because this would be the equivalent to the BSA system, which fines the guilty party 3x the retail value of the product they pirated. Not 100 or 1000x like the RIAA seems to enjoy charging.
BSA says: Pirate a piece of software worth $200, pay $600 fine.
RIAA says: Pirate 1 song worth $1.25, pay $15,000 fine.
Something's a bit off with those numbers if you ask me.
Re:Ernie Ball (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is the same BSA (Score:2, Interesting)
Shockingly, this is irrelevant. That license is not considered adequate documentation by the BSA. You must have the original invoice, with the installed software on its own line-item of that invoice, with a price for that line-item. The invoice must be dated, and it must be in the name of the organization that *currently* employs the user of the software, or that owns the hardware on which the software is installed. The invoice cannot be just in the name of an agent of the organization - the organization's name itself must appear on the invoice. The BSA is not mollified if your company acquired another that itself legally purchased the software.
In other words, the BSA requirements are much more stringent than copyright law requires, and are not even laid out in the EULA. They deny rights of first sale. They are simply the requirements that the BSA demands be met to keep them from claiming that you owe them money. Since almost every company has at least one or two actual violations, and since our insane copyright law allows massive punitive damages for each violation, the BSA gets to hold a handful of legitimate issues over your head as motivation to go along with its version of the documentation requirements. They are continually promising to reduce the amount you "owe" them if you follow along, which they have plenty of room to do. And to put a stop to any of this you have to be willing to spend something along the same lines anyway in legal expenses, except with the added risk of losing some or all of the claim.
There is no question in my mind - the BSA is far more despicable than the RIAA. The RIAA is a laughable, largely ineffective bully; they remind me of SCO. The BSA on the other hand is more like the IRS. They have an incredible amount of power over you and they know it. They use that power to require your cooperation in cutting your own throat, and you have to listen to them moralize about it at the same time.
Re:Less sympathy for companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, they get reported by disgruntled employees. Quite often, the employee that reported them is not the only disgruntled employee. I have only heard one time about a company that everyone loved getting reported. Every other time, it didn't shock anyone but was only "a matter of time".
Re:Ernie Ball (Score:3, Interesting)
RAM has just gotten to be SO cheap
And yet a lot of people in a lot of companies are using their computers to create and modify Office documents while using an enormous amount of RAM that is 768MB.
See, if your job does not require you to run big applications or read/modify big documents a smaller amount of RAM is sufficient, since you won't be able to use it anyway.
Oh, by the way, mycurrent PC has 4GB of RAM (Windows sees 3.25GB) because I like gaming, but currently with a lot of apps open, there is 1GB of free RAM and 1GB of "system cache". Task manager says that I am now using 2.7GB of RAM+PF, while having open programs such as: firefox with a lot of tabs (500MB RAM), Opera with even more tabs (450MB), 4x computing applications ofr PRimegrid BOINC project (4x 110MB) and some others that use less than 100MB of RAM, such as MS Word 2k3 (15MB) and MS Excel (9MB).
My laptop has 1.2GB of RAM and works OK. The only computer I feel RAM shortage on is one of my servers that has 1GB of RAM, but runs VmWare with Windows 2003 as host and guest and pfsense as guest. I would like to run more virtual machines on it, but there is too little RAM and CPU (2x Xeon 700MHz but there are 2 free slots and it supports up to 16GB of RAM).
And about XP 32bit RAM support - this was Microsofts doing, because Windows server 2003 32bit supports up to 16GB of RAM with PAE.
Re:Ernie Ball (Score:4, Interesting)
It's even worse for books. I haven't read a dead-tree book in a while. Instead, I load the text into the Orca screen reader, and play it at high speed (about 460 words per minute). There are tons of texts out there that are only available in encrypted form, and many that aren't legally available on the Internet at all. Shame on those publishers and authors! How do blind people buy their products? What I've settled on for books that are not legally available in unencrypted form is buying the real thing or a license to the encrypted version, and then downloading the illegal version. There's one author I particularly like that I'm thinking of sending $100, with a letter asking him to be more open with his works. His poor judgement has turned his entire life's work into a very popular free download, while insulting the blind, and causing guys like me a lot of grief.
Anyway, I agree with the author that the BSA is not nearly as hated an organisation, partly because the software industry reacted less stupidly to the pirating. Book publishers are next on the list of casualties, and once again, it's much their own fault. They are busy giving Amazon a monopoly on e-books, just like the music industry did when they handed distribution to Apple. Good luck negotiating a fair deal with Amazon when they are the only game in town. Personally, I will gladly buy music from Amazon, since I can play it on my Linux box, or anywhere I like. I will never buy a Kindle book, or a song from Apple, so long as they are locked to the vendor's devices. The book industry needs to get a clue and learn a few lessons from the software and music industries.
Re:Value of music vs value of software (Score:3, Interesting)
What is the value of something that can be copied with perfect fidelity, infinitely, at virtually no cost to copy or distribute... and that has a finite demand? Any finite demand met with an infinite supply creates a value/price as close to zero as makes no odds.
What is the value of the software that is the game of Tic-tac-toe? Microsoft Offices is only somewhat harder to duplicate and distribute, but not much. A seat at a concert or a hammer off the assembly line is much harder to duplicate.
The value of a work of art is it's enjoyment. That's it's raison d'être, just as we make hammers to push nails into wood.
This might be a difference in our views of what value is. The world outside me seems to think that something is worth whatever the seller can charge for it (the market may or may not agree). Value might mean utility. Music has utility... it makes life a bit more worth living and communicates between cultures, generations and individuals. Listening to Bat for Lashes on the drive home helps me relax. It won't advance my financial status in the world, but i certainly enjoy it. That utility might vary from person to person. My computer and my CD collection would fetch roughly the same price. The computer has for more utility in the sense that it "does stuff", but i value my music collection more. i'd be willing to pay $20 or so for a copy of X-Men 171, but my girlfriend might only take it if it was free. Some nerd richer than i might be willing to pay even more in an auction.
i'm not sure that anything is necessary. i dislike the word "need" as it creates in the listener some sense of obligation and in the speaker a sense of entitlement. One does not need to work, have a car or even breathe. Having those things makes other activities easier, but they are need inherently needed. Happiness, comfort and existence are unnecessary. Breathing is necessary for life, but life is NOT necessary. You can choose to die. If there is no need for life, saying you need to breathe is, by itself, untrue.
A business could forgo computers and software if they wanted. They will find themselves hard pressed to compete and would likely fold quickly. But the company doesn't have any need to exist or do well.
Honest people still fear the BSA (Score:4, Interesting)
He refuses to run free software because of his BSA paranoia. He is paranoid that if he doesn't buy it, he'll get screwed by the BSA. The reality is that as a small business owner, he pays rock bottom wages to the people (almost always women) who work as a paralegals for him and he offers no benefits that I know of. Consequently, he doesn't keep people very long. It's really easy for them to find better paying jobs elsewhere. And his office is in a small town so it would be fair to say that he doesn't get the best and brightest to work for him and sometimes employees leave under bad circumstances. They get angry about something and quit. So the BSA has effectively made this small businessman so paranoid that he never considers free software as he is afraid that somehow he might violate some law by using it and he pays full price for everything he buys just for peace of mind and he still fears the BSA knocking on his door and somehow finding one program without a license on a PC at his office. Their tactics may be different from the RIAA but I don't know anybody who fears the RIAA the way my friend and presumably others fear the BSA.
Re:Ernie Ball (Score:1, Interesting)
And about XP 32bit RAM support - this was Microsofts doing, because Windows server 2003 32bit supports up to 16GB of RAM with PAE.
Indeed. Windows XP supports 64GB of RAM, but there's a license check at boot time that limits RAM to 4GB. If you patch Windows to remove the check it works with more RAM. Details here [geoffchappell.com]. The whole idea that 32 bits limits us to 4GB is nonsense.
The real difference DRM (Score:3, Interesting)
The BSA has one purpose ensuring enough licenses have been bought and even better they stick to going after people using software to make a buck thats all pretty much fair.
The rest of the media industries go way beyond making sure IP is paid for.DRM Schemes are causing more and more irritations.
Why should pre-schoolers be forced to watch anti piracy crap and advertising?
why should we, we paid (those that didn't don't have to)!
Really the difference is the bsa wants customers to pay , the Entertainment industries want everyone to be their bitch.
I wouldn't care if they stuck to the stuff they have some right to control but they don't.
Simple example digital camcorder
tape has a family event on. plug the firewire cable between the dvd recorder and the camcorder hit play and record and after 5 seconds the recorder says the tape is protected wtf?
Granny cant be sent a dvd of the happy event because of the DRM imposed on the users own content.
Then there is the racket of collecting payments for music that has been created and given away freely and then the payments are withheld from the very people who created the music in the first place.
Then you get insane prosecution and Judgements beyond all reason for content which can even be downloaded legally for a dollar or less or even free (via google china for example).
Oh I forgot to mention the insane copyright extensions which get longer and longer so the legacy of performers long dead cannot be appreciated by anyone unless its one of the rare exceptions that have commercial value like mickey mouse.
To top it all off we are getting our privacy and our communications spied on and inspected just in case we might do something that possibly could have made the media industries a few cents.
not popular? they trash our rights our culture and threaten us when we create things without their input.
If 1 in 12 download something illegally there are 11 in 12 being treated as criminals with no justification at all.
Re:Ernie Ball (Score:5, Interesting)
Nonsense. This is precisely the problem the article describes. Just publish in PDF. We all (customers, that is) want it in PDF. Every book reader out there can read it, and free translators exist for almost any format you want. Every other format out there for e-books is designed to keep the users from doing what we want, which is to copy it from one of my devices to another. Listen to what we customers want, and forget what you want to sell me. It's really pretty simple. I want to read it on my netbook, kindle, or smart-phone. I want my screen reader to speak it to me. Quit restricting me from using your books, and let me buy them!
Small comment (Score:4, Interesting)
BSA's members have always offered their products for sale to the public
A couple years ago I needed a specific version of Windows, in English, while being in a foreign country. It was not available for sale in said country, so I thought, I'll just go purchase it online. After a bit of googling, I was really surprised that I couldn't find it for sale as a downloadable ISO (I needed it on that very day). Finally on eBay I find an auction to "a link to a downloadable version of Windows with license". I instant pay and within one minute of each other I get 2 messages, one from the seller that gives me a link to a fake site with just written "download Windows with license" (and nothing else); and another one from eBay that states that the sale was pulled for breaking terms of service on software (what, after I pay ?!?), without even offering a refund.
Now call me naive, but on that day I learned 2 things: (1) Windows lost not only a sale but many customers since it was the very day that I started installing Linux on my customer's PCs because of their reluctance to sell online; (2) eBay actively encourages criminals and just do some handwaving to cover their ass.
except for obsolete software (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Because Photoshop CS3 is JUST FINE and CS4 is a waste of money. They all want you in the upgrade path. "Just good enough" computing hasn't come to the software market. Yet.
Re:Ernie Ball (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, that I would donate money to, to see the RIAA taken to court for copyright violation. There are great precedents now that might result in a handy victory. Couldn't someone look at a "if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander" scenario here?