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Business Software Alliance "Grace Period"
The BSA is running (until January 31) a "Grace Period" for "voluntary compliance" in the cities of San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, Houston,Norfolk/Richmond, Nashville, Indianapolis, Bozeman, and Orlando. Small businesses recieve a card in the mail, having been assigned a tracking number, so you know you're in their files. In previous press releases they state that they send out up to 700,000 of these cards simultaneously. Scanning their reported settlement victories, they then seem to pick 2-4 business to destroy. If the businesses don't go along, the BSA hires the Federal Marshals as mercenaries to help ensure compliance with their extortion. Microsoft, unsurprisngly, is a big supporter of this and pushes it to vendors as a chance to strengthen customer relations. (this is a powerpoint document, but thankfully you can also have it: translated via google). CD: Here is a link to the press release on this matter.
OK, let's say you steal $50,000 from the bank, and the police come to your house and say "Give us the $50,000 or we'll throw you in jail." Is that extortion? Hardly.
Why do people think that illegally copying software is a right? If you don't want to pay for software, use open-source software instead. Isn't that why we're all here -- to promote open source software solutions? Why are we hell bent on also trying to legitamize bootlegged software, when doing so does nothing but make "free software advocates" look like a bunch of freeloaders?
I wish people would understand that free software is exactly the opposite of freeloading -- it's giving your work away for the public good. Articles like this one put me in the same group of people that are on the side of the illegal theft of intellectual property that someone has chosen not to make public. It's someone else's right to ask me to pay for software, just as it's my right to give it away for free.
Go write free software. Go use free software. Go evangelize free software. But please, don't be so fucking petty as to complain about someone enforcing the fact that their software isn't free.
Or in other words making people pay what they agreed to pay when they started using the software. Its not like they didn't have a choice.
Emotive words like "mercenaries" and "extortion" don't help, any more than words like "piracy" and "software theft".
Meantime this is an excellent time to stop preaching to the choir and start telling those businesses about open source software. Issue press releases. Get interviewed by radio and TV.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Do these BSA guys realise what they are doing? Scaring off their customers? Being extremely arrogant and intrusive? What about that old adage of your customer being the king?
I guess _this_ is one of the best reasons for switching away from vendors that are members of the BSA: None of those license troubles with free software. None of those expensive audits to do (is that included in those MS TCO calculations?). None of those guilt assumptions. No insecurity.
..the BSA hires the Federal Marshals as mercenaries to help ensure compliance with their extortion..
Well, thanks for that nicely impartial journalist attitude there. Its amazing what a simple line can do to affect the inflection of a story.
Instead, how about..
'the BSA hires Federal Marshals to ensure the hard work and effort by its members is not stolen by parasitic scum who steal like common thieves.'
I develop software for a small company. I'm quite lucky to be where I am now, doing what I want to. I also work on OSS as a hobby.. (Such as a perl port of PG+ that runs Uberworld.) Trust me, if ever I meet someone offering me a 'warez' copy of something I wrote I certianly won't be giving them a big cheery grin..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Under current copyright and contract law, BSA is free to represent its members and do what's described in this article.
However, I find its methods too severe and too aggressive. BSA should consider helping the companies to comply with licenses rather than scaring them and send in the police. If BSA developed a good license administration tool and released it under the GNU GPL or any open source license with the source code, I think many companies would improve in their license compliance.
Some companies will steal anything they can, but most companies are serious and should not be treated as criminals. Doing a good license audit today is very costly and hard to administer for a small or medium sized company. BSA should treat the potential costumers of its members with respect and appreciate this problem. Developing an administrative solution and perhaps a license crawling spider - with very open code - is a much better way of helping the companies than by using cease-and-desist-letters.
Hence, BSA should consider a different and more customer friendly policy. We, the public, should consider an evalutation of the copyright system for computer programs at large.
Regards
Mikael
Pawlo.com
And let me explain why.
:-)
(moderators: this is not a troll.)
The harder the BSA come down on companies like a ton of bricks, the more attractive open source alternatives will be.
The microsoft licensing schemes are so convoluted that even if you buy stuff from legit resellers bundled with your PCs, you still may be technically in violation of m$ licensing, depending on how your software is being used.
It's almost impossible for large corporations to be 100% sure of total compliance, even if all their software is purchased legitimately. And the BSA knows this. It's exactly like the mafia's "protection" racket.
Fortunately corporations now have a legit means of escape. Replace NT servers with Linux ones. The cost of switching to Linux might be high, but often the cost of having to "get compliant" is higher. And Linux is a one time cost, whereas you can be assured the BSA will be knocking on your door regularly if they think they can get away with it.
So I say bring on the BSA gestapo! They will be inadvertently helping promote open source alternatives, it's better promotion than Linux could ever buy (though we can exploit the situation if we choose
Imagine if the RIAA sent a card to every person in America asking them to sign a statement saying they don't own any pirated music, and if they don't sign, you can be raided by federal marshalls for suspicion of piracy. A long time ago, I thought 2002 would be a good year. Finally peace on Earth, regular space missions, a moon base, etc. Instead we have endless bickering over a few dollars worth of binary digits that somehow do something that is expected to be traded for money or something else of value. A few dollars worth of binary digits that, if you refuse to Opt Out of a legal battle by signing a statement, will mean you are subject to illegal search and seizure. This would be like the Government sending a card for everyone to sign stating they "don't have any illegal weapons" and if you don't sign, you are immediately suspected of owning illegal weapons. Whatever happened to the 5th Amendment? Whatever happened to being innocent until PROVEN guilty? Are they going to take that right away now?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
The problem is that the legal system allows groups like the BSA to initiate action with no reprecussions when the defendant happens to be in the clear. The BSA gets to throw around a lot of clout because companies can't handle the expense of defending against a frivolous BSA lawsuit, even if they are 100% innocent.
No.
I'm speaking here as someone who, a couple years ago, was working in the IS department of a company which was hit by one of these threatening letters.
Generally, they instruct the target company to run their auditing software to "prove" that they are in compliance with all software licenses on site. Such letters of instruction usually include a threat of legal action if the company does not comply. The threat is their standard operating procedure - it doesn't matter if you are 100% legal.
Since most companies would rather not pay to defend against a frivolous lawsuit, or risk an oversight of some software than Joe Employee may have installed, they end up performing the audit. The BSA doesn't offer any compensation for IS hours lost due to this audit.
They also arrange penalties for any discovered "violations". Some of these can quickly get out of hand. For example, in my case, a copy of WordPerfect 5.1 (yes, in 1997!) was lying around on a Netware server which 350 people had access to. Nobody even knew it was there. Guess how many times that violation stacked up, even though no one was using the software.
Although Slashdot's writeup sounds biased, it really IS extortion taking place.
- SEAL
Let's put this perspective. Let's say that I own a business manufacturing foo X's, and I have a friend who manufactures a related product (foo Y). We know that we are being illegally deprived of millions of dollars annually, but the law doesn't adequately protect us. We have been in our particular industry for a long time, and we each know of many other businesses in a similar situation. We form an alliance with all of these businesses, and we work with the government to help stop the crimes against us.
Suddenly, by announcing a grace period for these criminals, we are extortionists? Since when did extortion include benevolence?
The legal definition of extortion is: the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right. 18 U.S.C. S 1951(b)(2).
The key words here are wrongful use. Is it wrong, when someone has stolen something from you, to offer them a conditional amnesty? You steal from me, and not some hypothetic company, and I'll do everything I can to see you put in jail.
Calling this extortion is akin to the robbery victim who pleads on the news for the return of his wallet - no questions asked - and all will be forgiven: is the victim then the extortionist?
I note that Borland, the developers of Kylix, is a member of the BSA. Are they evil for expecting people to pay for some of their products? Or, because Microsoft is also a member, does that mean that OF COURSE it is extortion, and OF COURSE the federal marshals are mercenaries? Or will the federal marshals be exempted when they are protecting your ass on an airliner?
Is that the equation? Federal Marshals On Airlines = Good Guys, Federal Marshals Helping Microsoft/the BSA = Bad Guys? And if the BSA are really extortionists, does that make the marshals guilty of aiding and abetting?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
If you were a struggling proprietary commercial software developer would you join the BSA? Would you want to be associated with the immoral wealthiest companies and individuals in its ranks?
I think a better tactic to use to keep the majority of your user group in the paying customer category is to make your product worth buying and to make your product more valuable when it is purchased from you. By virtue of its (limited) success RedHat seems to be a company that exemplifies this tactic since its product is available free almost everywhere but people and companies still buy its products and it is very nearly profitable. A proprietary software developer should have no problem finding ways to make its product more attractive to buy than to copy, since it doesn't have the handicap of selling Free software.
People will always find some excuse for piracy, but until someone is pirating YOUR software, i really dont think you have any right to excuse yourself. It's theft of intellectual property. Don't do it, even if you have philosophical problems with Microsoft.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I have this idea for a Linux commercial for any distributor who wants to run it...
Scene: People working at PCs in Office
Suddenly the door bursts open and in come a group of lawyers accompanied by Federal Marshals
Lawyer: "Business Software Alliance! We're here to check all your software licences. If you are running illegal software you may be fined thousands of ponds and go to jail for 5 years. Here's our search warrant"
Manager: (smug grin) "Go ahead - we're all running Linux!"
Exit BSA....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Jesus christ, they aren't sending Federal Marshalls storming into a business for no reason. That could not happen without some sort of precident. I don't believe that the BSA has ever done this and not uncovered mountains of software license violations.
Did you read in the article that the BSA were sending like 700.000 of these threats at a time?
Obviously, all the evidence they need for sending someone a letter is that they run a business.
OK, now suppose your business has a clear policy of never using pirated software. So what can you do?
1. You run the self-audit software. It is closed-source spyware, you have no idea what it will report, and you cannot expect any compensation if it breaks your mission-critical machine. This is an ugly option and there is no good reason why a honest businessman should be subjected to it. And nobody, guilty or innocent, would subject themselves to this voluntarily.
2. You "refuse to cooperate". Then you will get a visit from law enforcement, probably greatly disrupting your operation. Moreover, if they find anything wrong - your sysadmin made a mistake, or some stupid employee downloaded a serial number for Winzip - then you will have to pay for the exercise. Even if everything is actually perfect, something may be construed against you and you will face further expenses defending yourself.
Now tell me again that this is only fair.
No matter how you hype it, it's just not legal for a company to own (or sometimes not) a single copy of Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office and run it on 10's or 100's of computers.
?Acually there is a fairly obvious situation where this would be perfectly "legal" That is where the company in question has the relevent licences.
I know of at least two small game developing companies who went bust after producing some very popular games.
Everyone had the games. They weren't even very expensive, just a couple of quid but 9 out of 10 copies were pirated.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Someone like Red Hat need to run an ad in the business section of each towns local news paper with a copy of the threating letter and let people know there is a better way...
They are fools if they don't use MS marketing when they can.
But before you go defending the BSA's actions, particularly with respect to enforcing Microsoft's "rights," maybe you best take a look at Overseas Invasion. It's an old article (1997 or 1998, I think), but one is inclined to wonder if this is still going on. (Never mind that it shouldn't have been happening in the first place!)
I once thought the BSA was a Good Thing. But after reading that article many years ago, the BSA forever lost any credibility in my eyes!
FWIW.
That's what this is all about. You'll notice they never send these cards out in October or May or other times of the year. It strikes me as purely a gambit to get dollars in the first quarter when many businesses (especially in this economy) are really holding back on capital spending until later in the year.
By sending these cards out they'll get extra revenue they might not have gotten. It's just like the middle ages -- when the king's coffers were low, he sent his soldiers to the villages to collect extra tax.
Jesus christ, they aren't sending Federal Marshalls storming into a business for no reason. That could not happen without some sort of precident. I don't believe that the BSA has ever done this and not uncovered mountains of software license violations.
Actually, they are. The last time this ran, someone recounted how the BSA raided their company (with federal marshalls), shut it down for 3 days, destroyed several Sun workstations while trying to run their software on them and then tried to walk away. Oh, and they didn't actually find anything.
Reboot macht Frei.
a/ 700,000 cards is NOT a targetted mailing. It's plain spam and you have to wonder if they have a licensed mailing list or just copied the stuff out of a trade directory (most have copyright clauses preventing such use these days) :-)
b/ any company receiving such a card should get the company lawyer to write back pointing out the legal consequences of libel.
c/ I wonder if Microsoft or Adobe could satisfy the BSA audit?
Why?
In short, BSA tactics turn member companies' customers into adversaries, and scare said customers into giving them money rather than go through the time and trouble to "prove" (at the customers' own time and expense!!!) they own all their software. It sure sounds like extortion to me! In any case, I dare someone to argue that threatening to sue ALL your customers and cause them added expenses, even if they did nothing wrong, is a good way to develop a customer relationship!
...to ensure their copyright is not violated. A previous business I worked for was raided; and I support the folks who had it raided. If you use commercial software, pay for it. How much more simple can it get?!
Glad to see the statement in an earlier posting that the US Marshals require a court order before they'll act. Some people here and elsewhere like to be childish and think that the Marshals are just hired thugs for M$. Not true. The Marshals are doing the job of enforcing laws that have been on the books for decades and people understand at least the basic idea of those laws.
Anyone who pirate software is committing a crime; and they should be ready to pay the consequences. It's more likely that a business will be caught than an individual or household. That doesn't make piracy any less wrong.