Shakedown: How the Business Software Alliance Operates

An anonymous source writes: "I'm a faculty member at a public university which the Business Software Alliance contacted in a bulk mailing last Fall. Stupidly, our IT department invited them in to 'explain' licensing to us, and now we are trying to fend off an audit on our computers (public and private). Two questions: what kind of leverage does the BSA actually have against us? And does anyone have war stories, successful or otherwise, of their encounters with the BSA?" Although Slashdot is running this story as from an anonymous reader, we have contacted the source and believe the story is factual and the appeal for help is real. Consider this Slashdot's contribution to National Copyright Awareness Week.

The source continues: "The report that the BSA gave to our administration was filled with scary stories about other schools who tried to resist, so unless there's some hard evidence to the contrary I suspect our university will just roll over. We were told that:

• auditing software *will* be installed on every campus machine;
• the license for every program, on every machine, must be produced upon demand;
• failure to produce licenses for all commercial or shareware software will constitute prima facie evidence of illegal possession, with penalties that could range from the confiscation of the machine to the firing of the user;
• and this includes computers *personally* owned by faculty."

Comments

Check with the school Lawyers

[Frobnicator]

Most public schools have a few lawyers. Get them involved NOW.

Tell them the problem, including asking if the BSA has the RIGHT to DEMAND that you run their programs on your computers.

If the legal geeks say that they do, get together with them and jointly request the IT department to move away from those companies.

That does two things -- first, you will show the BSA (not boy scouts) that you are willing to fight back, and second, it presents a case to the school the problems of private software in a public setting. (That's an obvious Free Software comment. karma++ )

Next time...

[Silver222]

Don't invite them in, ever. This is like the police department in your town mailing out letters, and you inviting them into your house to have a casual look around and "explain" the law to you. You're just asking for trouble here.

BSA or cops, they are both a pain in the ass. Don't invite them over.