BSA Software Piracy Fight Smacks of RIAA Crackdown 282
Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich writes "A Business Software Alliance raid on musical-instrument maker Ernie Ball Inc. cost the company $90,000 in a settlement. Soon after, Microsoft sent other businesses in the region around Ball's a flyer offering discounts on software licenses, along with a reminder not to wind up like Ernie Ball. Enraged, CEO Sterling Ball vowed never to use Microsoft software again, even if 'we have to buy 10,000 abacuses.' Similar BSA raids around the country have been provoking strong reactions from put-upon business owners, echoing similar reactions to music-lovers targeted by the RIAA."
BSA Tip Line (Score:2, Funny)
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That should frighten anyone with ears.
Re:BSA Tip Line (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, you want to kill BSA/RIAA?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:BSA Tip Line (Score:4, Informative)
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-- go with virtualization and terminal servers to remove hard drives and media access port so ANY employees who don't need them
-- replace with Open Source as MUCH software as they can
-- pony up money for consultative groups with similar passion for not being pursued by mshaft
-- come up with new NDA documents that specify that the company will counter-sue ANY employee who discloses licensing violations without FIRST notifying IT, the company
10,000 Abacuses? (Score:3, Insightful)
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"Beyond hunting for dicey characters buying and selling counterfeits, the BSA also devotes significant attention to other forms of what it calls piracy by business users. The money harvested in these company-by-company crackdowns is not parceled to its members whose copyrights were infringed; the funds stay with the BSA to fuel its operations. (BSA's worldwide settlements soared 53 percent last year to $56 million.)"
I could list a number of reasons why this statement alone pisses
10,000 abacuses? How about 10,000 Linux installs? (Score:2, Informative)
Also, I have a lot of respect for Ernie Ball products; their guitar strings are my favorite. I'm relating this story to my local LUG. They deserve some respect for publicly denouncing MS.
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Re:10,000 abacuses? How about 10,000 Linux install (Score:5, Informative)
No, a company was fined for not being able to prove they were not using Microsoft software illegally.
Although the EULA doesn't state they must provide a receipt for the software, or that the "Certificate of Authenticity" doesn't certify that the software is authentic (go figure), that is the standard to which Microsoft holds its customers on penalty of lawsuit or (more commonly) extortion.
I received two letters from the BSA in 2003, both warning me that I could be liable for "hundreds of thousands of dollars" if they audit my business and I am unable to prove that every copy of their member company's software was legally purchased. They helpfully offered, "Can your business afford that risk?"
Y'know, I couldn't. I switched to free-as-in-freedom software.
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If they want to audit your business, make them get a warrant
That's what I don't understand either and perhaps somebody could explain it to me. How the hell do they gain access to all of your systems if you refuse to let them in? Are they going to sue you and force you to turn it all over in discovery?
Yes.
Has anybody tried to fight them on a legal front? It would seem to me that just by showing up to court (even if pro say) and answering their motions you could drag out the discovery process for months. Months that you could use to find any out of compliance software and fix it -- or better yet, switch to OSS if that's an option for your business.
1. Switching at that point would not matter if they found out through discovery that you previously were not in compliance.
2. Being a pro-se defendant is time consuming, and time is money in business. It would probably be cheaper (both in terms of time and, of course, effectiveness) to hire competent council, at which point it's likely that time is not your ally - certainly when compared to the plaintiff.
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If you actually read into the matter more thoroughly, you'll find out that they were turned in by a disgruntled former employee. That former employee was responsible for maintaining their li
Yes, he REALLY meant abacuses (Score:5, Funny)
So you can stop saying "no need for abacuses! try linux!"
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The REAL question is, (Score:5, Funny)
not that there's anything wrong with that (Score:3, Informative)
Authority for raids? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Authority for raids? (Score:5, Informative)
BSA: "We have reliable evidence from a confidential source [read: disgruntled (ex-)employee] that you don't have valid licenses to the software you use."
Company: "You don't have any authority over us. GTFO."
BSA: "Fine."
[BSA starts suit against company, submits evidence to a judge, and during the discovery period requests complete documentation of all software being run on company systems, along with licenses and date of purchase. If company fails to provide, BSA files for a motion to compel or some such legal mumbo-jumbo that basically gives the BSA the judge-approved legal right to take apart every computer and really ruin their day.]
BSA: "According to what we found, it appears you're liable for tens of millions of dollars of damages according to current copyright fines."
Company: "Err... gosh, maybe we overlooked purchasing a few hundred software licenses here and there. Our bad. Say, do you have any kind of compliance deal for companies like ours who accidentally used unlicensed software on every computer we own and where we don't have to admit guilt?"
BSA: "Sure, just fork over $90,000 on top of paying our legal bills and purchasing licenses for all that software we discovered, you admit no wrongdoing, but you also agree to annual audits from here on."
Company: "Yeah, again, our bad... hey, who should we make this payable to?"
[Company makes the payment, BSA cashes it, company buys licenses to all software, and BSA files motion to dismiss suit.]
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If by "local law enforcement" you mean raided by "armed U.S. Marshals" [infoworld.com], then apparently yes.
Re:Authority for raids? (Score:5, Funny)
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html [news.com]
Great news (Score:4, Insightful)
Many people just download photoshop because that's what they know. If they have to pay for it, there will be a HUGE shift to GIMP. And that's even more true with Microsoft stuff, at least in Spain. I know very few people who have bought a copy of Windows (not counting what came with the computer). But it's easy to pirate, so they go for it. If they faced fines of 1000 euro for it (or had to pay 300 to buy it in the first place), a lot of people would consider linux. Now, both are free (in practice), so price is not a problem when choosing. Factor that in, and things look very different.
So, good news, people will start using what they need, and not the professional (and expensive) tool for home stuff. And that usually means open source.
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In reality, the computer already has windows installed, so replacing it with linux is a fairly major effort. To use your photoshop example, I suspect rather more people would purchase something like PaintShopPro, than would install GIMP...and it would meet their needs quite nicely, for much less money,
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The real seismic shift is from proprietary Windows-only applications to free and portable applications.
Once all of your applications are available on both Windows and Linux, "fairly major effort" above becomes "fairly trivial effort".
Driver support (Score:2)
Once all of your applications are available on both Windows and Linux, "fairly major effort" above becomes "fairly trivial effort".
The problem is not just applications; it is also hardware drivers. Drivers do not come for free because not all manufacturers of PC hardware cooperate with the free software community. Often, someone switching from Windows to Linux outside of a planned hardware upgrade has to repurchase much of the hardware in a PC in order to have hardware for which a freely available driver exists.
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I've loaded Linux onto literally hundreds of machines, and I'm quite confident you are overstating the problem, although certain hardware still lacks native drivers. (Of course, Windows video drivers work pretty well on Linux - I'm using one to type this. :-)
For older hardware, however, driver support in Linux is generally superior to Vista, and a little thought will show why this is inevitable. Manufacturers have all the wrong motivations to support olde
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Never been one for the 'separate window for everything' layout of Gimp.
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So people get hooked on expensive software like photoshop through pirate copies then when they need to use it for work they buy it legit.
As for windows virtually everyone in the western world pays for it as part of thier computer purchase. Most PC vendors would not dare sell a machine with pirate windows preloaded (especially in theese days of WGA which invites users to rat on thier supplier in exchange for a free windows license) and mo
Ahh!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh my god, Slashdot has become Reddit
2002 News? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
What ever happened to that saying (Score:2)
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OTOH, i do buy games like Company of Heroes to promote good games so that the manufacturers make more such excellent games.
Seriously why can't OS be prices at $39.39 instead of 129...
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OK if you're a poor student P2P'ing music, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't have the money to pay for the software your business use, you shouldn't use the software in the first place.
Not so simple. (Score:4, Insightful)
"The BSA considers software pirated if a company can't produce a receipt for it, no matter how long ago it was purchased. Software boxes or certificates of authenticity are no help, because the BSA argues the software could have been obtained from an illegitimate source."
Does that mean even if you have Windows XP and MS Office certs stuck on the PC with a 1:1 cert:install mapping it doesn't count? What idiocy is that? I know lots of businesses will have difficulty retaining receipts and records longer than a few years. Might be in a box somewhere but nobody left in the company will know about it.
Whether the PC was stolen or not, if the cert+ key is real Microsoft etc already have got paid for it.
It could even be a gift, believe me people do donate software. I'm sure many churches and charitable organisations get such stuff. You don't always get receipts for that.
Thing is the BSA might have a different agenda from the companies it represents.
I heard the Microsoft boss in my country handled piracy cases differently - he told off his staff who apparently were going around taking people to court etc. Basically his opinion was these people were happy users of Microsoft software, all his staff needed to do was to convince them to license. Which shouldn't be too hard - "Hi, would you like to pay the $$$$$ per infringing copy (plus bosses risk imprisonment) or $$$ per licensed copy?".
Instant sale. Don't even need to send them any fancy media or boxes. Don't even need to send people to help install and configure the software - they've already done all that work themselves.
Only send in the thugs if they refuse to license after you find out they are noncompliant.
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Sure when ordinary home systems started coming with hyperthreading then multicore MS had to allow the home edition to run on them.
IIRC that was a technically enforced limitation not a license limitation though.
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You bet that the BSA has a different agenda.
Can we get a new icon? (Score:5, Funny)
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Anything concerning the the RIAA could still contain the "foot" part, but the "gun" would have to be large and belt fed.
Microsoft fanbois. (Score:2)
No sympathy for Ball. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've mostly worked in desktop support for over 1/3rd of my life so far. I don't do cubicles or offices anymore unless it's a favor for someone that's not going to be a pain in the ass, or ask me to do back breaking work (like breaking my back lifting an 200lb IBM netfinity server onto a rack). No no, those days are over.
Over those years though I can't recount how many times a customer would need a windows re-install, or an office re-install, whatever. I'd ask for the original CD and they'd tell me "Don't you have a copy?"
The "Don't you just have a copy?" people were the same people that would nag and haggle me on my billing, like it was some sort of open air arab market, instead of a indoor air conditioned "professional" workplace.
These days i've all but quit doing IT type support, cept for a few special cases. My current business/company uses windows, and i've gotten legit copies from various places. A few programmer friends got me copies of XP from the MS employee store for $35 each, which I have running on 2 machines. I also purchased a copy for another machine for $99. The rest of the machines at my business are running Linux.
Open Office does fine for me.
Maybe because I started off in IT and knew what type jerks steal stuff, I made a personal choice that I didn't want to be like them.
Re:Missing sales recipts = piracy (Score:3, Informative)
At the same time, did you insist on a copy of the sales reciept?
The BSA is considering copies with certificates of authenticity as sketchy if they are missing the sales reciepts. At home, anything off warranty is missing the sales reciept. The news of the BSA audits is definately encouraging me to go 100
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Try none?
These types of customers were the worst. Always wanting cheaper cheaper cheaper. If they needed a "new" PC i'd first suggest going new dell, and if that was shot down i'd source quality parts, and they would ALWAYS pull crap at the last minute like "Oh my brother in law can build it cheaper". I'd sit there and explain things l
Seriously though (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, they willingly copied software and got caught and they paid the consequences. Although it seems based on the article it was only 8% unauthorised, they only changed over when they were caught, if they were really supportive of open source they would of moved off their propriety systems long ago.
I work in IT, and I pay for software that I use, if I can't afford it I find something else - its no excuse to copy it.
Nothing to see here move along.
Re:Seriously though (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have a copy of the reciept for every piece of software? That thumb drive that uses an encryption program... which is installed on the PC, where is the reciept for that $10 thumb drive? No reciept is a violation... Just ask the BSA or read the article. There is almost nobody in full compliance. My biggest violation is a lack of reciepts. All my copies of MS Office are in violation except the newest one simply because I haven't kept the reciepts.
These violations are being weeded out as I migrate to Ubuntu and dispose of the obsolete high liability software.
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That is a fantastic point. The BSA is taking credit for a reduction in the percent of software piracy from it's high in the 1990's to it's current low level. The total amount pirated is "Quadrupled" simply because there is more software.
The biggie, is there are many more vendors in the software arena. The prices have come down, so affordable alternatives are easy to get. I don't need Photoshop. I can use Arcsoft which came bundl
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The BSA does not accept a "proof of license" sticker. You MUST present a receipt for the software. If you go to a trade show, and accept a "free" copy of swagware (say, a copy of Windows) that does NOT have a receipt, you will be counted in violation.
Under THOSE rules, 8% is (translated) comletely in compliance.
[and yes, I do not accept that "free" software because it exposes my business to the BSA, and (reading the EULA fine print) at least one commercial software product put audits in! (possibly
Revenge Au Gratin (Score:2)
The IRS also has a tax informant reward program, which is useful if you know that your employer is cheating on their taxes.
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What if you don't know that they are cheating but decide to report them anyway on the hope that they made a small slip up somewhere for which you know they will get disproportionate punishmet?
Afaict in any company over a certain size it is virtually impossible to ensure that all software is licensed. People who need to get something done ASAP and are fed up with the beuracracy and/or co
Old Story (Score:2)
They've got the news outlets in on it too... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Unfortunately for them, it is getting businesses into compliance. High risk high cost software is discontinued as a possible business buster as low risk software becomes good enough.
Missing reciepts for MS Office and Photoshop are high risk liabilities. Missing reciepts for The Gimp and Open Office is no problem.
There are several high profile companies using open source.
http://www.aaxnet.com/design/linux2.html [aaxnet.com]
http:// [mtechit.com]
AutoCad Substitute? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now my needs are bit modest, so I get by with SketchUp, and Alibre, (although my versions are not free, they do offer free versions), but a major Engineering company might have a rough time finding an easy-to-use substitute.
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AutoCAD substitute? Try CATIA... (Score:3, Informative)
Check it out here [wikipedia.org].
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Gimp has a long ways to go.
Linux users missed a chance... (Score:2)
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I read an interview with Ernie Ball after the raid. He DID switch to Red Hat Linux, and by his estimate saves $100K per year. He thanked microsoft for the money he is now saving.
Think about Vista and its slow take up (Score:2)
Can we be honest here, how many of us, even the linux users, try out MS latest OS just to see the new shiny? I am guilty of it but not with Vista. Why? I found no reliable way to pirate it. I am NOT going to pay for it. I don't 'want' it, I just want to see it.
Why should MS care? Because I am also that guy who knows computers and fixes things.
I fix XP, I told people to move to XP and other upgrades before simply because I was tired of dealing with ancient versions of windows that were even harder to maint
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Vista is, IIRC, distributed in a one-DVD-fits-all (editions) way; what gets installed is determined by what product key you enter at setup. (Exceptions are two different DVDs for x86/x64 architectures. Not quite sure about volume licensed copies, but I think they ought to use the same DVDs, too.) The available choices include, apart from Home Bus
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Sure, I tried Vista... at Fry's. I was really disappointed, too. None of the windows burned up when I closed them. Not one.
Perhaps one day Vista will be ready for the desktop, but this is not that day.
Doesn't it just figure ... (Score:2)
old news but still (Score:2)
We need a Monopoly Free Movement (Score:2)
If we *truly* want to be free of these criminal organizations we need to create viable competition against them. OpenOffice is a good start, FireFox, etc.
Gimp needs improvement to even be mentioned with Photoshop, that being said, most people who use Photoshop could use Gimp if its UI were improved and features be more intuitive.
There is a
How should companies protect their IP rights? (Score:2)
I'd comment on the article... (Score:2)
Pure class.
No receipt = BSA considers software pirated? (Score:2)
And some times the certificates of authenticity or the key on your systems case is the only receipt. What about software / hardware makes you send in the receipt for rebate or warranty?
What even happened to innocent until proven guilty?
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Re:The solution is simple (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, this is old.
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Seriously though - you're right, the article is an interesting read and the summary is, let's be honest, completely misleading.
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1) Are still using open source software, and don't have any Microsoft products
2) Are in violation of any licenses. (After all, that's what they got busted for in the first place-- you can violate an open source license too.)
But this on Slashdot, it's a non-story. It was news in 2002.
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Thats funny, I read TFA and linux was not mentioned at all..
"open source" > "linux"
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One interesting thing I noticed is that the article (well, slashdot in general) contrasts the cumbersome intricacies licenses of regular software with the simplicity of OSS. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of OSS because of the freedom, but the licenses aren't exactly easy to understand. You know that whole GPLv3 debate? A lot of those provisions (and a lot of the provisions in GPLv2) are
GPL restricts distribution only (Score:4, Insightful)
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No need to monitor licenses (or have lawyers interpret the licenses for you), no company lock-in, no BSA worries or worries about disgruntled employees, no extra book keeping to keep track of licenses, receipts, or hardware (with licensed software already installed). And of course, it's easily and infinitely customizable because the source code is available.
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Re:The solution is simple (Score:4, Informative)
Saying "Don't pirate" is easy. Getting a company of any size to reach 100% compliance is utterly painful. It's no different than being autdited by the IRS -- they're going to get you for something.
Re:The solution is simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Then there's the per device and per user licencing.
It'd be easy to keep track of if the only licencing model out there was "one key, one system" but in order to appease big businesses there's volume licencing, and that spread out into other different models. The fact that there are businesses out there who exist simply to keep track of licences says there's something dreadfully wrong with the current system.
Re:The solution is simple (Score:4, Interesting)
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Using open source is the better option. Far less paper work and its a lot simpler.
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Re:The solution is simple - Not really (Score:2, Insightful)