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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."
First, this is NOT a troll.
Second, I think it is very paradoxal for someone to use lots of pirated software and be furious because one company includes GPL code in their commercial software.
I just say that you must be consitent in your judgment. Enforcing software licenses is good or bad? Please choose.
It is good when its your software, but not when its someone else?
I would argue that now is the time to fight the BSA.
Why? Because the majority of software companies come from Democrat states (California, New York, Washington) leap to mind. That's why if you want to fight the BSA and the RIAA do it when the Republicans are in office. Both the RIAA and BSA gained thier strength between 1993 and 2001, the Clinton years.