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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."
While I'm of course not a lawyer, but what right does this organization have to come in and put anything on the computers that are privately owned? I think they are trying to make you THINK that they have right and you'll give them the go ahead because they've convinced you they do... while in reality you could tell them to go to hell and they couldn't do a thing about it.
Perhaps I'm not 100% informed in what the BSA does, but how can they just march in and start installing software and demanding licensing documentation? They are not a government organization, right? It looks like they operate Internationally, so where do they get their jurisdiction to start making demands?
Some big organization needs to do this in response to a BSA audit request.
Once the BSA has its sights set on an organization, then that organization had better have either the licenses or the money to pony up FAST to buy them. I have seen cases where the BSA isn't satisfied with responses and comes back with Federal agents (yes, guys armed with subpoenas and guns.)
If you are reasonably sure that your licensing is OK, then you could probably stave them off. It would be a unique Uni that licenses all of the software being used though, based on my experiences.
Basically, you are screwed if you a) don't comply with them and b) don't have your licensing in order.
Why should an organization be peanalized for personally owned computers? Yes, IT can set rules and what not but how many users actually follow IT rules?
Note to self, don't bring laptop to work if company is being audited by gestapo...err, BSA.
I would suggest that you 'lawyer up'.
You absolutely need your legal counsel involved in this. An IT department is generally unsuited to handle these type of business/legal affairs.
By sucking in the legal folks you turn it from an IT problem to a 'university as a whole' problem.
Do not let them strong arm you into anything. Play hardball. Tell them you are doing an internal review that could take months.
Remember, they will be very reluctant to force the issue into a courtroom. It is very bad PR for them to take an impoverished college to court. A jury would be filled with people who all have 'unlicensed' software on their home PCs.
But in the end, you will have to make a reasonable effort to be in compliance and generally pay for the software you use. That, my friend, will be unavoidable. Unless, you switch IT platforms to a free or close-to-free software environment.
Good luck.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
If you have a company who is grossly out of whack with licenses, they will grant you a "grace period". Kind of nice to know that not everybody is out to screw you.
Just my $.02
The BSA isn't all bad. First, haggles over license increase the total cost of ownership for commercial software, which makes free (as in speech) software more attractive.
:)
Second, I used them to shut down a competing software retail store once. The place was selling Microsoft OEM software off the shelf. A call each to the BSA and to Microsofts Piracy line and the place was out of business in 4 months.
The BSA holds Power of Attorney to act for the manufacturers in these matters. So, if you have software from a BSA member then the BSA asking to see the license IS like the manufacturer asking for the license.
Ask them for the Search Warrant. They should at least have to have a reasonable belief that you have software on your computer that is not licensed. Arbitrary demands to search your computer are unreasonable, they cost you both time and money, no court should uphold a part of a license that subjects anyone or any institution to unreasonable searches or demands, no matter what the licensing. Notice in all EULAs they put that little clause in there that says, "If any part of this license should be found unenforceable, then the rest of the license shall remain in full effect..." That's because the EULAs have not been thoroughly tested in a court of law, and they know they are going to lose on some parts. Without some kind of evidence they're going to have a pretty weak case.
...and that word is "outrageous." If your administration does not step in and put a halt to this egregious evasion, then you can tell them I told you they are a bunch of pussies.
Seriously: Where's the search warrant? How enforceable is a EULA with such broad contractual provisions that it forces a licensee to waive all rights to due process and freedom from illegal searches? (Before you naysayers tell me the Constitution has no bearing in this, check the facts: In many cases, BSA shows up at the doorstep with their very own law enforcement escort.)
There is a legal concept known as "blue-lining" in which a judge has the legal authority to water down, modify, or even eliminate certain portions of a previously-agreed-upon contract. I learned about this after I found myself the unwitting signatory to a capricious and completely illegal legal document. The state recognized the document as legally binding; however, the state also found the terms of the agreement were overly-reaching, capricious, and without legal standing, effectively nullifying the contract.
The reason why companies continue to write obviously unenforceable contracts is that they know the number of people willing to fight in court is very low. Most will simply roll over, expose their underbellies, and submit to being raped rather than fight.
Step 1, bury all burned CDs
Step 2, download distro of choice.
Step 3, burn that onto CD.
Step 4, format HD and install it.
Step 5, laugh when you show them the freeware license.
Alternatively,
Step 1, transfer to another school.
Step 2, feel bad for your friends.
IMarvinTPA
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
It seems to me that there's no way they can force the university to fire people over licensing issues. *Especially* professors. Most of those people have tenure, you know. Professors with tenure at my university have gotten away with embezzling grant money and sleeping with undergraduate students. Depending on the tenure contract at your school, it is probably *illegal* for the university to fire professors over this issue. BSA can't possibly wield a big enough stick for this to hold any water.
As such, it seems to me like they're protesting too much. The scenario they paint is patently ridiculous.
Read Bujold. Free (as in
and this includes computers *personally* owned by faculty.
I assume you mean owned by faculty - but onsite at work? If so - why wouldn't they be treated like any other computer onsite.
BlackNova Traders
BSA or cops, they are both a pain in the ass. Don't invite them over.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Also, my 2c on this: There are a few angles. Clearly, a private institution is innocent until proven guilty under US law. So, the scare tactics the BSA is using on your University take a couple of prongs:
- For the legally not so savvy, it says "We'll sue if there's even a hint that you might not own some software! Put our software on your computers to keep us from suing."
- For the legally more savvy, it says "We can make your life sufficiently annoying that it will be cheaper to just let us put this software on your system." Then we'll go away.
To address this for both audiences at your university, you'd like to be able to prove:- Your university is not, in fact, legally liable to the BSA, and that it in general isn't responsible for what people do with their personal computers.
- It will be significantly more expensive to install the software they require, than it will be to get legal counsel to tell them to go away.
My guess is both those things are true: A nicely backed up presentation proving both those points would probably quelly our nightmares. Good luck! Post back and tell us what happened.If the Gestappo comes by asking if you've seen any Jews, do you ask them to explain what Naziism is all about?
Until this IP law is overturned, cower and hide if you're not williong to put your ass on the line to do something about it. In this case, your guy put his ass on the line, it's only natural that he takes what's coming to him. Consider it a form of back-assward martyrdom.
At this point, the only leverage that they really have is fear - they're trying to intimidate you. This is what they've done to hundreds of other companies. They come in, use your "acceptance" of a software product's EULA as a hammer, and either force an audit (which, with the criminal penalties they throw at you, gets to be scarily expensive) or force you to pay upfront and forget about the audit.
:)
Yeah, some people call it legalized extortion. IANAL.
For something like this, they should really go through your university's legal department. If the legal department hasn't gotten involved yet, then get them involved now! Get some counsel. They are the folks that were hired to protect you from this sort of thing (among many others).
This sounds just like pure intimidation to me. Especially once you mentioned that the audit includes personally owned computers. If they want to audit my personal laptop, which I bring into the office sometime, they would not send the notice to my employer. They would send it to me. Like I said before, talk to a lawyer. A lawyer, not the Slashdot crowd, can give you the best advice.
--
Welcome to the land of the easily amused...
In talking to a judge friend of mine you have several choices: 1. Tell the BSA to go to hell and hope they don't have probable cause to get a search warrant. If they get one they will come back with the police and then you will have a criminal problem - this is not a likely scenario for a public institution. 2. Let the BSA in and try to deal with them as best possible - however I would have my attorney do the talking to them - most attorneys don't scare too easily. 3.Tell the BSA that you are busy and to come back in a couple of weeks. In that couple of weeks clean up your act and let them in. Personally I would tell them to go to hell and make them come back with the cops. Why? So they have to fight to get into every business. If they have to do this it will eventually stop them as it will become financially impossible for them to continue. As a public institution you have a different problem than private businesses. You have a public relations problem. I'm sure that this is what the powers that be in the university are thinking about. My problem is that the BSA thinks that they are a peace agency (police agency) and they aren't. As far as I am concerned the best solution is to not deal with the software companies that support the BSA!
I'll hit the second one first. If the personally-owned computers are on the network, they're close, maybe, to being able to audit those. Maybe. But that's really grey. I know I, for one, wouldn't let them on, and if they came into my office and said "let me look on that machine," I'd simply disconnect it and say "no."
For the first one, though, I have a much bigger problem. Can anyone cite any other [industry / realm / product space] where one is required to retain all receipts in order to prove ownership? I don't need a receipt to show that I own the shirt I'm wearing. If someone wants to accuse me of stealing it, show some evidence. I don't need a receipt to verify that I own the couch in my living room -- if someone thinks I stole it from my neighbor, fine, prove it. So, why on earth do I need a receipt for software?
I can understand the technical complications that are entailed here -- like when you've got 1 CD for 100 machines. But the legal issues are what I'm more curious about. In no other situation am I, essentially, guilty until proven innocent.
Does anyone know if anyone's fought the software industry on those terms? You can't prove I stole it, so go away. Seems like it should work, but then again, maybe I'm being idealistic.
(Okay, I thought of two examples -- cars and real estate. But those are tracked for me by the government, and if I lose a copy of my title they can send me a new one, for a modest fee.)
Personally, I enclosed a RedHat sticker in their mailing and told them where to stick it....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
I don't mind if they take GPL'd code.
I don't even mind if they RESELL GPL'd.
I MIND when they stop me from redistributing GPL based code however I damn well please.
The report that the BSA gave to our administration was filled with scary stories about other schools who tried to resist...
:p
Seriously, why hasn't someone taken up these bozos on racketeering charges or something? And if your answer is that the bozos bought the government and it's too late, don't bother posting... Every story I hear about the BSA, including their own commercials sounds like something out of a gangster movie.
Bleh. More IP doom stories. What a waste of time.
--- this comment is presented in WIDE SCREEN STEREO!!!
That said, my only experience with software audits is with Microsoft. It was quite a galling experience because the company I worked had spent a lot of money and time insuring that only licensed software was running on the machines. After that good faith expense, the BSA comes in and demands an audit. They basically hi jack our hardware people for a week, cause no end of interruptions to the development of our product, install gods knows what on all out machines, and wreak general mayhem. If course we could have avoided the entire thing by paying the "protection" fee. They treat the customers like addicts. It like you get the drug free know, and when you are hooked, we will exact the price.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How do you know it's Microsoft?
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
It's in the EULA, unfortunately... They can audit you anytime they wish. To not let them do so breaches your licenses.
For God's sake, READ THOSE EULAs! If more schools, businesses, orgs, paid attention to what they were signing themselves up to, one of two things would happen:
1. They'd opt for more "Free" as in freedom software that does not have such draconian strings
2. There would be FAR more pressure to change or limit what can be put in EULA's..
But, the bottom line, the EULA is a contract that your org agreed to soon as you clicked "I agree". Submission to the BSA is one of those things they agreed to.
Sure, much of it MAY be illegal and unenforceable, including the BSA audits, BUT, because you all "signed" the contract, it's up to your org to go to court and PROVE it...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Let's be reasonable here. This is an industry group. They are not a company or corporation, or even a government body. That is, they don't have shareholders, and they don't get to take home bonuses if they have a "good year." In fact, the people at the BSA would consider the best year to be one in which they have no work at all.
Why? Because the BSA exists for no other purpose than to protect the investments of software companies. Whose products benefit us all (yes, even we Linux customers...for surely the software in use by banks, at the DMV, at "the club," etc. are not all free!).
So step back a bit, and calm down. If you do have illegal software, well, what is your defense? To be frank, that is illegal and immoral, and definitely does not make your university a role model for students, IMHO.
Remembering that IANAL, IIRC, if you don'thave any illegal or pirated software, what have you to hide? Basically, the fact that you are so worried about it indicates that you do have something to hide, and I have to say I feel sorry for you.
But not that sorry. After all, information regarding fines for pirating software was freely available to all who wanted to find it. If you then chose to ignore this, well, you took a risk. If you blew it, well, it sounds harsh, and IANAL, but I believe you are in trouble.
Good luck, and everyone, please remember. If you can't use free software (which does not fall under the BSA jurisdiction, IIRC), please keep it legal. The software industry benefits us all, especially at the university and business levels.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I am sure that somewhere in the university there is a disgruntled, or ignorant employee that is more than willing to have private discussions with the BSA regarding the software that they and everyone else uses. Once armed with the conversations with "Insiders" then the BSA has a leg to stand on to get in with the law enforcement types and really force you to do things.
Oh, and so far as them requiring audit software on your computer... NO WAY can they do this! They would have to take you to court, sue you and win with some of the terms being software licensing monitoring.
They tried to force the company my mom worked at to do this. She called me, and we went ahead and just removed MS office from every machine and installed StarOffice.
Followed by a nice letter to the BSA and MS saying that they are going to go open source now b/c of the BS of the BSA
The BSA often operates off tips from disgruntled former employees. A sufficiently credible employee, with a bad enough story, might be able to convince the feds to issue a warrant, but that is not likely. More likely is the threat to file a lawsuit.
No system will be perfect. If you implement systems to *try* to operate with properly licensed software, disgruntled former employee stories are less likely to stick, and once they see that a system is in place, the BSA will be able to see that litigation is not likely to be profitable on the occasional bad copy.
You'd rather be the angelic university that tried hard than the greedy pirating corporation that stole everything in sight.
The issue is not about enforcement but about the tactics used. How can they demand to search for infringements? They should know on which systems these infringements exist. Imagine someone comming up to you on the street and asking you where you bought your pants and to prove it or else you will sued...
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
As far as whether or not they can do this, if anyone (person or organization) who wants to audit you like this is not an official department of a Government Law Enforcement Agency, whether it's federal, state, or city, then tell them to fuck off. Otherwise, you are guaranteed due process and they will need to obtain a search warrant.
Privately owned PC's would be a separate search warrant - as they are not owned by the University they the University is not liable for it's contents.
Too bad the powers that be at the University won't do this. But what they should do is just install the Open Source, Free OS of their choice and tell the BSA jackals to burn in hell.
And to any member of the BSA who might be reading this: I run Red Hat Linux 7.1 at home. Go away. Kapisch?
BSA: We need to see licenses for all your software.
Me: This is an open source shop, but if you tell me which open source license you would like to see...
BSA: We at least need you to run this auditing software.
Me: Hmmm, seems kinda pointless, but what the hell. Do you have a Linux version?
BSA: No. You will have to remove your Linux OS and install an MS based OS that we do support.
Me: You want me to do what?!? Get the !&@$#%*@$%^& outta my sight!
[the obligitory IANAL here]
we did some research here at our company. my CEO and i were discussing it (i'm the CTO), and he told me he had done some leg work on the subject when the BSA first started their "scare tactic" TV/radio campaign.
the BSA is a software reseller. they have NO LEGAL AUTHORITY. they are not the "Software Police". they can't come to you and demand anything. you have to (stupidly, actually) ask them to come and perform an audit. then, when they find non-compliance, they offer to sell the company the licenses at a "special price".
they're vampiric...if you don't invite them in, they have no power.
of course, now that the ball has started rolling, they can probably bring some legal action. i'm not sure what legal recourse the SPA has (for example). subpoenas/warrants/etc, possibly. i imagine that there is a goverment agency to which they can appeal for such. and the BSA only has to pick up the batphone to them to start the ball rolling.
i know that doesn't help now, since they've already gotten a foot in the door. but it may help others.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
This is my personal encounter - YMMV !
I attended a "seminar" hosted by Autodesk and M$ several years ago. At the entrance, the pretty girls were asking us to fill in info sheets, you know, like names, address, company you work for, et cetera, et cetera.
Since Autodesk and M$ were so kind to provide us with Orange Juice (Morn time, you know), I filled in the blanks.
Never would I thought that what I filled in ended up in BSA's file, and from then onwards - 6 years already - I and the company I work for, received THREATENING LETTERS, telling us that WE BETTER COUGH UP MONEY TO BUY GENUINE SOFTWARES or they will haul our butts in slammer.
Funny thing is, the Autodesk and M$ software we used (yes, USED, PAST TENSE !) were OFFICIALLY GENUINE, NON-PIRATED COPIES !
I got into troubles with my boss, since I was the one who filled in the blanks.
No matter how we tried to tell BSA that ALL OUR SOFTWARES ARE GENUINE, the threatening letters keep coming.
It got so bad that my boss decided to scrap M$ and all Autodesk softwares, and now we run Unix and NON-Autodesk softwares.
Yes, it actually cost us MORE to change our system, but at least, BSA, with Autodesk and M$, have NO MORE CLAIM ON US.
And the threatening letters still keep coming...
Talk about insanity.
And what happened above happened OUTSIDE of the good ol' U. S. of A.
Don't think you guys in the States suffer alone.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
if you are sure you are not using lots of pirated software... then you'll be fine... just give them the info you have...
Whoa! Isn't that like submitting to being searched by John Doe at the side of the road just because you're certain you have nothing to hide from him? Please, please, please heed every else's advice here and stock up on some copyright/software/IT lawyers. Repeat after me, "the BSA is a private interest group", "the BSA is not an elected or state-imposed authority", etc...
Tortuous interference with prospective economic advantage is a crime. They have no real basis for assuming anyone has committed a criminal act and no intrinsic authority to prosecute. Contact your local prosecutor immediately and explain the situation - that your institute is in good faith compliance with copyright law, that these people are attempting to extort from you significant financial gain and that while it is your institute's expectation and intent to comply with copyright law, these people have no right to subject you to the cost burden, nor any right to access to your systems. Get the law on your side now, because if you refuse they will attempt to get a warrant with the federal marshals. Refusing access to a borderline RICO organization is not a crime. Also get some sympathetic local press coverage immediately.
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Information at
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/15/0
Be proactive. Fight back. A good tactic might be to develop an open source policy predicated on the cost of compliance with commercial software licenses being too high since even the companies don't understand their EULAs it's just impossible to do so and therefore the university will outlaw commercial software on their network.
The BSA is funded by MS, adobe, etc. If the BSA generates net positive income, they will continue storm trooping around. If it becomes a liability to have one's names associated with the organization, the underwriters will pull their support. This is a political as well as legal battle and if you don't fight, you'll be screwed, as will the next organization.
There's a name for this and it's called extortion. Here's how it works. I am the extorter and you are the extortee. I come up to you and say, "A little birdie told me that you are/have performed xxx criminal act. If you don't pay me off, I'll tattle on you." Note: Even if even you do pay me, you still have committed a criminal offense. Paying the extorter cannot change that. If they have legitimate knowledge that you are committing a criminal offense, taking hush money is a crime.
The BSA uses the same tactics. They allege that if you don't comply, you'll be busted. However, they're not acting on behalf of the government. In fact, with only the evidence of "I got an anonymous tip," they shouldn't be able to get a Judge to sign off on a search warrant. After all, for them to get a search warrent, the cops need to have probable cause. I don't see how a third party, who has an anonymous tip from some other third party is probable (it's heresay). Without a search warrant, there's no phyiscal evidence of criminal conduct.
In short, consult your legal professional. Don't forget that you can sue them, too.
By saying:
You fire Bob or we will bankrupt you and send lots of people to jail.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
The Register's article BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans explains everything.
- Toby Inkster
Despite the radio and television commercials suggesting that he'd get fined up the ying yang, nothing happened. I have since concluded that the BSA is all bark and no bite. Here is my story.
I'm pink therefore I'm Spam
I've always signed our company up for anti-piracy this or that, I signed us up for the MS Freedom to Innovate Network mailing list, I forward blatant "Windows 2000 for only $10!" e-mail to MS piracy police etc. etc. I've even shut down a fairly large pirate serial codes web site a while back because they were providing codes for our software. I don't read the FIN Flash e-mails I get nor do I care about the various other anti-piracy updates I get but I keep asking for them.
Our office is in San Francisco, the city most effected by the BSA's tacticts. Lots of people I know got those letters. We did not. I attribute that to the above. Just a little plain old Sun-Tzu deception goes a long way.
As others have mentioned most of it is all in the EULA. While I don't necessesarily agree with their practices, if your school/company/home decides to use proprietary software, you have an ethical obligation to meet the licensing requirements imposed by those companies.
The other route to go is to use open/free software without such restrictions. Yet still as a corporation/school, it would be foolish to abandon auditing/inventorying your machines. It makes good business sense. If you can show that you have x computers that were orginally purchased for x dollars and are now worth x dollars, this is valuable information to the accountants who can see this as a company asset. If you chose proprietary software, a good audit will show the amount of money that can reported as total computer assets. If you choose free software, you still see the computers as an asset, however, you can show the cost savings of using free software over proprietary software.
Again whatever software you use, you should respect the licensing that comes with it, whether it be Microsoft's or the GPL.
Yah, here at UC Berkeley, I like to
say that we have a football team, a police force,
a law school, and thermonuclear weapons.
I doubt if the BSA has the last item on the list.
Seriously though, this is what the legal dept. is for. Punting this issue as far up the chain of command as possible is the best approach.
There is only one word to respond to your inquiry.
LAWYERS.
Stop directly communicating with the BSA in any capacity direct all communications through your schools existing lawyers. Then go find yourself a firm that specializes in intellectual property. Bring this up with your school's Board of Trustees and see what they think and what they might able to do about it. Most private schools have reasonably influencal people on their board and they might be able to save your butt here or know someone who would. I know that on the board at my small Quaker school that has less than 2000 students, we have quite a few people who might have corporate influence in this sort of situation. If your board gets worried about this and someone on the board knows someone high up at MS or some other major BSA member you might be able to slide out of this. Use your contacts to your advantage.
If they dont have a Search Warrant signed by a Judge call the cops on the for tresspassing.
Get a lawyer... (preferrably a TEAM of lawyers on it ans Start the sanitation process now.. (Even if you think you are in compliance... they will not leave without a fine.. also be sure NOTHING has a share active and running.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just nuke your machines across the board, backing up the important data, and reinstall everything after they leave. Tell them you use MSDOS Edit to write your papers in LATEX by hand. This process, while a huge hassle, is probably less hassle than the BSA will give you, and when you're done, you'll have cleared out hundreds of gigs of useless crap, reinitialized your Windows registries and effective defragmented everything in one fell swoop. Also a good time to do some software upgrades.
I know this idea is unfeasible, but I'd love to see the look on their faces when a dual processor 1.5 ghz machine boots to a dos prompt.
When I worked as a SysAdmin for our local University, we received a letter from Microsoft that basically amounted to the same thing. "We're coming, we're auditing, be ready"
Now, we were mostly in compliance as far as we knew due to our large per-seat volume licensing through dynamic pooling, but we were pretty sure that we'd come up short in the end. Given that we weren't running any auditing software on the PCs it was difficult to impossible to know what was on every machine. So we called Microsoft and told them we needed time. They agreed to grant us two months, but then went on to specify exactly what software we were to use to perform the audting. We replied that we were going to choose our own that was less expensive, but were told that we must use this particular software, because they knew it to be honest and compatible with Access. (Like that should make a shit bit of difference) In the end we just bent over and took it rather than deal with the auditors showing up, and purchased this lame auditing software. It had to be deployed manually from machine to machine. Almost 2000 computers later, we had our audit. We wound up ponying up some pretty serious bucks for our machines. It slaughtered our entire budget for the next three quarters.
Point is: Microsoft probably didn't have the right to just announce that they were coming, but we knew that, as a public institution, we couldn't afford the battle to fight.
No one ever totaled up how much money we lost on that piece-of-shit software and in man-hours for manual deployment, but if you add it to the big fat check we wrote in the end to keep Microsoft off our campus, it was a hell of a lot of wasted grant money intended for student use.
You can pontificate for days on replacing Windows with *nix, or killing Office for StarOffice. God knows I went to the shared governance committee more than once trying to get them to see the light. In the end, however, everyone winds up signing a fat-check.
Cynical perhaps, but a truism all the same
..cage goes into salsa. Shark's in the salsa. Our shark.
I know lots of people that will produce the contents of their pants for only a few cents :P
Caveat: IANAL.
As far as I know, they have no grounds to force you to do ANYTHING unless you have signed a bulk-license or site-license agreement. Those agreements generally give you access to the software for a lot less money, but in return you give up all protection against 'unreasonable search' -- part of the agreement you sign allows them to inspect your systems to make sure you are in compliance.
If you bought your software through normal distribution channels, chances are very good you can tell them to pike off. As far as I know, a click-wrap license DOES NOT allow a search, because they can't know whether you agreed to the license without searching you first. It's only when you signed another agreement, which they have on file, that they have you over a barrel.
I will add my voice to the many others here telling you to get the lawyers involved. The BSA plays serious hardball. These people survive and can continue to exist only by extracting large sums of cash from your organization, and will use any tactic required.
They are not your friends. They are active enemies and you should treat them as such.
That you *really did* buy the software, and you *really did* lose the original CD and license paperwork (presumably an authentic CD would be accepted as having purchased the product, even if the license paperwork were missing). Assuming you are bound by contract to submit to the audit itself (wich other posters have rightly questioned), what are your choices?
1. Fight them in court, in which case you might actually win -- the judge might agree that you are innocent until proven guilty.
2. Pay again for the software.
In most cases, which is cheaper for you in the long run? I think this is the problem, and what the BSA is depending on most of the time -- the simple fact that in many cases it probably costs less to pay for the missing licenses than to fight for your rights, even if the software was completely legal.
First off, lawyer up. Let the lawyers talk.
Second, smack the IT moron who thought it'd be neat to call the BSA and invite them in.
Third, smack moron again...
Fourth, Direct the mailroom to filter out all junk mail...
I got one of these "truce letters" from the BSA about 4 months back - FOR A COMPANY THAT I SHUT DOWN 5 YEARS AGO! I still get mail with that company's name on it, so I knew this thing was total crap... Didn't even open it... Wrote "Refused... Return to Sender. Addressee Unknown" and tossed it right back into the box...
Fuck the BSA...
A company or organisation that cannot show any proof of such policy beforehand is more likely to get the goons in.
A search warrant of some sort is always required and the authority issuing it will be far more prudent when you have such a policy in place and are able to show you enact it.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
the EULA is a contract
No it isn't. Courts have not ruled this way so far.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Vampires can only come in if they're invited?
"BSA members represent the fastest growing industries in the world. Worldwide members include
Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, Borland, CNC Software/Mastercam, Macromedia,
Microsoft, Symantec, and Unigraphic Solutions. Additional members of BSA's Policy Council
include Compaq, Dell, Entrust, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Network Associates, Novell, and Sybase"
Would you consider a Birth Certificate, Death Certificate, or Marriage License a kind of receipt? :P You need to hang onto those, too. "Gee, honey, I lost our marriage certificate. I guess that means I can go boink the cute new sales rep."
Heh, me and my wife don't have a copy of our marriage cert, we lost it almost immediately after we got it. Luckily though the county where you get married keeps a copy on file, so you can always just have them send you a copy. So that particular example isn't much of a problem. You can also get birth cert copies if you have enough ID.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I find it increasingly frustrating that law suits are being used to bully citizens into conforming with corporate expectations.
"You wrote a bad review of my product online? Have a law suit."
Problem is that defending yourself is often costly, making people much more willing to settle and/or comply.
The BSA is a wonderful example. A single case of unlicensed software is not equal to a widespread conspiracy to pirate software. It would be interesting if someone took the BSA to court for their tactics, especially if they tried to use the RICO laws, which seem the most applicable. Comply or we make your life miserable, threaten you financially, all of which can be avoided by paying this one small fee... A legal precedent simplfying the ability to document software and licenses would be nice.
For example. At work we run everything on Windows 2000, because it's what the boss wants. However we have several different sources of licenses, from machines that came with Windows 2000 pre-installed, to machines that originally had DOS/95/98/NT, and purchased software, and direct licenses. We could probably fend off the audit, mostly because we're a small company. It would be nice if we could run their audit tool, so that they know we have all the various software on the machines accounted for, and compare it to a list of licensed software, and software purchases. Sadly I have heard that they often will not accept any particular license for a computer, but want the one that was specifically sold with it, which is both an administrative nightmare and bullshit.
The other one that gets me is the seizure of property. Where do they have the legal right to do that? They don't... They can get me for copyright violation, but the machine isn't their property, and unless they're going to compensate me for it, and all the other software on it that's legal.
The whole thing burns me because it seems like the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" has been turned on it's head. Now the defenders are often at a significant disadvantage in our legal system and it can even be used to put them out of business even if they win (see Creative and Aureal).
If licenses are really contracts (like everyone from RMS to Bill Gates say they are), then why do they need to see them? It would be like your landlord demanding to see your rental agreement, or your insurance agent going all nasty on you and demanding to see your insurance policy.
If it's a legally valid contract, then the manufacturer will already have a copy of the license and already possess proof of your assent. It seems to me that if they even have to ask to see the license, then it can't be contract.
p.s. Can you be in breach of contract for not agreeing to the contract?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I want to go to a school that will teach me AutoCAD. Surely what you say would make it impossible for me. No matter what you people say about how wonderful open-source software is, I havn't found anything that lights a candle to the specialized apps that Autodesk produces. Well worth the $7,000 per seat that my company pays.
I'm sure there are a lot of other closed-source software packages out there that are hands down superior to open source options. Probably for the reason that they require far more manpower and organization to produce than any open source network has yet to accomplish.
Of course, in reality this is about privacy, but most people don't realize that.
Amazing magic tricks
It strikes me that many organisations in the USA are wussies when it comes to dealing with the BSA. The BSA is an organisation that is basically a front for Microsoft and a few other big companies.
You should be playing hardball with them. It's happening in the UK. All the biggest organisations in the UK are getting together and collectively saying no to the Microsoft "if you're going to do this kind of stuff, we're going to look for alternatives to your software. And if you don't give us more reasonable licencing terms, we're going elsewhere too." It seems to be working. I don't know why it isn't happening in the USA.
- You don't need the warrenty to keep the product.
/their/ records to see if you had bought it?
- Birth Certificate, Death Certificate, or Marriage License are all kept on file and can be re-issued.
- you only need customs stuff just for the immediate moment of traveling / taxes.
This whole software thing is to prove that you actually own it way after you bought it. That should not be required... do they even look in
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Looks like the BSA is taking lessons from Scientologists.
While there are certainly many cases where a proprietary closed-source piece of software may be necessary, there are also big steps that can be still be taken.
In many cases, the very expensive, specialized pieces of software are more likely to be properly licensed anyway, since they usually use a more complex and restrictive licensing means which ties the license to your hardware in some form or another.
But on the less specialized side, just eliminating MS Office and using, say, OpenOffice6, would probably eliminate nearly half of the headaches with the BSA, as well as saving perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in a large campus. Eliminating Windows itself where possible (agreed, it's not always possible) would elimnate another huge chunk of the problem. The reason is because these pieces of software are both very common and very easily pirated, since they don't employ complex license managers.
Yes, there will still be the need for specialized commercial packages, but the problem and cost could probably be reduced many times by replacing the simpler stuff that tends to get pirated the most with free/open solutions.
I go to great pains to make sure all the software on all of my companies computer is legal, and paid for. And, if a law enforcement agency had somehow gotten a suspicious that we were breaking the law, I would have no problem cooporating with them.
But the BSA is not law enforcement. It bugs the heck out of me that they can do what they do. If they sent us a letter, the first thing I'd do is write up a proposal with an estimate of hours billing rate for them to sign before we would do business with them, another private business.
Granted, we are not a big company, they would probably ignore my proposal, and we don't have the money or the resources to fight them in court, so chances are I'd end up having to comply. But it really chaps my hide that a private orginization, with no real authority, can go around enforcing the law.
What somebody really should do is start an orginzation called 'Citizens for a drug free workplace', contact the BSA, and say that there is quite a bit of suspicion that BSA executives are in possession of, and regular uses of crack. You have one month to get off the crack, because then we're going into your offices, disrupting your business, and piss testing every one of your employees. While we have no legal right to do this, we're going to do it anyways or you're going down.
The Internet is generally stupid
One thing just poped in my mind.
If they do the audit, and find nothing wrong, they say they will pay for the audit. Fair and square. But what about all the time and effort your organization put on it ? What about lost of profit becouse of the downtime ? Would it be possible to sue BSA for it ? It would make them think twice before doing this kind of audit.
morcego
What makes you certain that I copied the software? Why should you have the right to diturb my business to investigate? Are you goin to compensate me if you find that all terms have been respected?
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
The way to deal with bullies is to go on the offensive. Sue back. Perhaps the most promising avenue in that direction would be to sue the BSA consituents for distributing software they know is insecure, yet laid claims to it being secure. There's a hundred years of rulings on health claims for food and other consumables that show that you're not allowed to claim something is healthful, even if you later state in fine print that it isn't. Those should make some good precedents. Be sure to quote the security specialist from Microsoft who quit recently and publicly sounded off that he couldn't understand why Microsoft still has buffer-overflow vulnerabilities. You might be able to use the precedent from some of the automotive cases in which manufacturers were proved to have released faulty products. If it can be shown that Microsoft knowingly releases a faulty product, you could turn the tables. Another point to bring up could be that Windows allows pretty much anybody with a floppy disk to install software. To me, that's faulty. Drum it into the head of everyone who will listen that insecure software opened you to unauthorized software installations.
Next, claim that the insecure software violates the DMCA by assisting in the distribution of copyrighted material... I'm sure you can find one installation of Back Orifice on your campus to back up your claim. Sound ridiculous? It's not as ridiculous as having to submit to warrantless search.
Be sure not to go on the offensive against law enforcement... on the contrary, get law enforcement angry at the BSA for wasting their time hurting the sweet little local colleges. Make sure everyone is clear that the agents could have been out fighting drug dealers. That sort of tactic worked for the tobacco lobby who convinced the California legislature that it was a waste of taxpayer money to run anti-smoking ads when the money could be put towards birth-defect research. There's always something more worthy out there.
Lobby your congresspeople. If applicable, mention that the people who would profit from the search are from out of state. Remember, pork runs congress, and it's not pork if it gets diverted out of your congressperson's district. You may win this through lobbying.
They're not being nice to you, don't be nice to them.
Miko O'Sullivan
Collect all of your licenses and hide them - make every computer without exception in "violation" and make them accuse you of running nothing but illegal software. Make them show up with guns and cops, force them to haul away every machine and shut down the entire campus. Make them go to the homes of professors and confiscate their machines. Make them openly claim that you somehow bought name-brand computers without Windows even though that's impossible. Make sure the press is there to watch it happen.
Then produce the licenses to the press.
It will not "become financially impossible for them to continue" because if they find a single instance of a single product that you can't produce a license for they make you pay their legal fees or pony up the $$ (at a severe markup) for the license. This isn't even about having an illegal copy, even. This is about being able to produce the physical piece of shiny holographic paper with the word 'license' on it. Failure to do so will result in you funding their next attack.
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(1) Tell the BSA to fuck off. You're a university, and likely have professors of law teaching there. Thus, no need to pay expensive legal fees, just ask your professors. They might not be able to win the case, but they sure can stall and drag it on at minimal cost to you while you take other measures.
(2) Archive all raw data.
(3) Wipe all of your machines -- that is, write over all data with zero's. To be safe, wipe the hard-drives a few times.
(4) Install GNU/Linux or *BSD on all of your systems, using all Office/spreadsheet/etc equivalents.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If it were completely groundless, then yes it would be illegal. The problem here is that in these situations, there's no way for the university to 100% license everything they use. Even if they make a concerted best try effort to license everything a few licenses will slip through the cracks. The university knows this, the BSA knows this, and that is why the BSA, to the best of my knowledge, has never been challenged when these audits come up.
Let's say on your entire campus, one license is not valid. If the BSA comes knocking at your door, you face a relatively minor penalty for that license, but then you have to pay for your legal counsel, their legal counsel, damages, the auditors, etc. The BSA knows this, and they use it to their advantage.
Now, keep in mind here that they are suggesting a product is not legally licensed if you don't have the paperwork to proove it. Therefor, if you aren't totally pristine in keeping track of the licenses for all your software that is, in fact, 100% legitimate, you can still get screwed by the BSA. Although I do wonder how well that would stand up in court, that is, unless the BSA can proove those copies are pirated, is simply not being able to proove them legitimate enough to get you into hotwater. I'm sure their license provisions make certain statements about this, but I don't know if they would stand up in court.
What it boils down to is that the BSA takes advatange of our legal system to extort businesses and it's about time that something was done to put an end to this. For example, I would propose that any organization that licenses software for more than say 50 computers, they should have certain protections from this sort of action. I would suggest the following protections:
1) Provide protection for good faith effort. If your company makes a good faith effort to license your software (at least say 80% of the value of the software is legitimately licensed), then all you can be held accountable for is the cost of licenses at retail price. No damages, no attorneys fees, no auditing fees. It would still cost you the attorneys fees to fend it off, but at least the expense would be clear and reasonable. If you have more than 90% compliance, then your legal fees would be covered by the suing party (though you'd still have to pay for the licenses). Thus, there's a strong disincentive to go after an organization that's not blatantly violating the law.
2) Receipts or other proof of software purchase should be considered valid proof of legal license. If you buy a thousand copies of a piece of software, you shouldn't have to keep track of a thousand pieces of paper. It would be impossible to proove that a piece of software is pirated, so it makes sense for the purchaser to be required to demonstrate ownership in court, but the burden of what needs to be proven should be much more reasonable.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I have a friend who is the IT manager for a ski hill and Microsoft demanded a license audit.
The lawyers came back and said no, companies have no Common Law Right to enter property and demand inspection. They could however, request the number of computers in use with Microsoft software and examnine the licenses for these computers.
The important difference was that Microsoft cannot enter private property and inspect the computers and software of that company. This is apparently a very specific legal right in Canada, party from our Common Law and partly from court decisions regarding our Charter of Rights.
(* This is who the BSA *really* is: [big software companies] *)
Try this: Tell them you will go on a mad OSS campaign if they don't go away. Show them a proposal to spend X amount of money on OSS advertising and promotion around the campus and elsewhere.
Show them a draft of an article about BSA thuggery and why it is now time for OSS that you plan to publish.
When they send in a representative, have a bunch of Penguins, OSS posters, and Red Hat boxes around your office. Give them a free Penguin T-shirt on their way out.
Table-ized A.I.
AFAIK there is no Linux CAD.
I heard rumours of a port or two of some package, but never actually saw any.
A good 3D CAD program would be cool.
integrate some simple FEA and I'd be really happy.
It's in the EULA, unfortunately
EULAs are a post-facto contract and it is usually not possible to return software after refusing the EULA. How is this a valid and signed contract?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Their audit software is called GASP and it's not available for Non-Windows or Non-Mac users. Darn!
c .phtml
http://www.bsa.org/usa/freetools/gasp/
Check it out, they have an EULA for GASP... I guess they'll want to see the EULA for each machine they install it on too.
http://www.bsa.org/usa/freetools/gasp/gasp_
I know there will be a lot of disagreement but I believe that its okay to sell software and get paid for it. I know the GPL doesn't forbid this but once you sell one copy then someone else could give it away for free.
What I'd like to see is a fair-use license. Basically it would follow fair use laws.
I think a license like that really would benefit both consumers and software companies. Personally I'd like to see an M$ settlement along those lines
The Anti-Blog
As far as I am concerned the best solution is to not deal with the software companies that support the BSA!
Open-source software should be advertised as "BSA-Free". Really, IBM should put this in their commericals about their Linux/Apache-based products. Open with a Gestapo raid and end with a "still psyched?".
> I would do exactly what pitcrew suggested -- tell them to go to hell.
A safer strategy is to pretend you didn't hear them in the first place.
Ever send a registered letter with return receipt, and never get the return receipt? It happens, and it's because the recipient doesn't want to acknowledge the communications.
IANAL, but it seems to me, to haul you into court requires a subpoena or a summons. Those documents require a response. Others could be ignored, as long as you don't intend to do business with the source of the noise.
And it seems like some members of the community are not playing nice, so why not kick them out of your yard? The BSA's IP range is: 204.180.189.0/24 (props to arin.net whois), if enough of us routed that to the bit bucket it would make it more difficult for them to do their jobs, hopefully reducing their profit and their supporter's interest in them. Ev1l Gr1n %^>
Interesting idea for a EULA case..
Ask the IP holder to produce the EULA that you specifically agreed to. Request proof that it was you/your institution that accepted the EULA, and not the OEM, shipper, independant IT person who installed the software, etc..
Not only can they not prove who exactly accepted the EULA, they can't even prove the EULA was presented in the first place.
"No your honour. Nothing that said click to proceed came up on my screen. Could be a bug in this copy of their software I guess, I dunno, I didn't make it."
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Darned BSA! Always camping and hiking and...trying to enforce manopolistic, cartel-like business practices! Shame!
At the very least there should be a "statute of limitations" on this. In computing 4 years should be enough, so a machine which is physically newer OR running a version of a package which is newer than this should be open to audit; everything else is not.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
(* If I [work] for an orginization...I am NOT going to allow some orginization to TOUCH my PERSONAL computer!!! *)
Do you mean your *home* computer? The BSA has NEVER gone after home users that I know of. (except maybe for mass factory-style pirating).
Does anybody here know of a single case of a regular home user being targeted by them?
If you mean your work computer, then your company probably owns it, not you, and thus they take the fall for dumb things you may do with it.
Table-ized A.I.
Being as I currently work for a law firm that is an advocate for businesses that are trying to fend off the BSA and we also offer audits (but not using any M$ product...), I felt compelled to write a quick note about this.
Software audits are becoming more and more common. The BSA announces targeted cities and conducts audits of businesses of differing sizes and industries. One of the ways to avoid a BSA investigation (audit) is to take a pro-active approach to software management practices.
Auditing all of your software and reviewing all of your licenses is the only way to ensure compliance with BSA standards.
The unfortunate truth of this is that it requires a very attentive IS department and/or an outside audit. This is what it sounds like the university in question is in need of (both, not either/or).
To date $68 million has been collected from companies (mostly through settlement) that failed to comply with BSA standards. As the problem of software piracy continues to grow the BSA will increasingly take a zero tolerance approach to this issue.
We know of no other firm that offers complete software management services on a cost-effective basis as well as the protection of Attorney-Client priveledge.
Learn a little geography.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Any first year law student, or third-year business student should be able to tell you that contracts law, which covers EULAs, do NOT protect people from bad or unfair contracts. Only a contract which attempts to enforce illegal terms can be voided (for example, selling oneself into slavery, or attempting to enforce a contract with a minor). Otherwise, as long as there is a valid contract (goods or services exchanged for consideration) both parties are bound by the contract. If the EULA says the user submits to an audit, then you're stuck. You might get a lawyer to dig around in the definition of an "audit" under your specific EULA, but considering how much time, effort and money M$ and others put into writing and enforcing their EULAs, they'll probably be able to hold out a lot longer than most users.
Has anyone ever thought to try and get a Grand Jury investigation against the BSA under the RICO statute?
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
If they were anything more than a thief team with lawyers, they'd give away their software auditing tools for free.
No sirree bob, they get you coming and going.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
"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)."
Tell them the guy who invited them in wasn't authorized to do so. They'll just have to resubmit their request. "Please send it in triplicate and don't forget to include return postage. Also, please include a detailed description of what this so-called 'explanation' involves, and while you're at it, a description of previously achieved benefits of this kind of 'explanation' would be appreciated. We can't waste our time watching another silly dog and pony show."
Briefly, you need to take back control of your gameboard and, for god's sake, man, stop acting like a kid who has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. They're trying to sucker you. They seem to think that you're a bunch of ivory tower intellectuals (possibly true) who don't have enough real world experience to realize it. From what I can tell from the incomplete description of the original mailing, it was deceptive at least and a bold-faced lie at most. These characters know this. They are banking on what all school-yard bullies bank on--you don't have the balls to call them. Beyond this, do not talk to them. They do not have your interests nor the interests of any other educational institution at heart. They are a bunch of greedy bastards with the morals of a mafia don. Treat them as such.
If they want to make jackasses of themselves, let them sue a public educational institution. These are the same guys who give away free computers to school kids to make themselves look good. Maybe they *are* that stupid. I doubt it.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
You are a dipshit and have obviously never worked in a large scale IT department.
(* You used a semilegal agency to audit your competition with the intent of harming them, and to the point of them getting shutdown. And on top of that you have the gall to brag that it was benifical to the free software community! *)
What do you mean by "semilegal"?
Anyhow, the author was playing it strait, and his competitor was cheating.
Are you suggesting that you let them cheat and put you on the streets because because you want to play it strait?
The BSA are not pure angels, but at times they do serve a legitamate purpose.
*Selling* ill-gotton software is a bigger sin than self-copying without paying IMO.
Table-ized A.I.
You may have given them the right to make inspections or audits when you signed a contract. My local cable company has a clause for this in their service agreement. A software license may also include language that permits audits.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
While I agree that software developers have a right to set licensing terms (sale, GPL, BSD, whatever) and require payment if that's their desire it is hard for people to agree that copying bits is the same thing as stealing physical property.
For example, if I break into your house and steal your stereo you no longer have a stereo. If I steal your wallet, your money is gone. If I copy Microsoft Office, Microsoft "loses" a licensing fee that they might or might not have received in the first place. If you ask 20 people if it's wrong to steal a boxed copy of Office from CompUSA it's quite likely that 19 or 20 of those people will say yes. If you ask 20 people if it's wrong to copy Office from their friend who bought it at CompUSA, I'd be willing to bet 15 to 20 of them will say "no" or "kind of, but it's too expensive to buy."
While I agree it's wrong, I don't really place it in the same category as stealing. I think that software companies will continue to have a hard time being taken seriously on this concept until they come up with a less dramatic and more accurate term. It is not "stealing" or "piracy" it's "unauthorized use" - which is still wrong, but doesn't have the dramatic effect that the BSA would like to promote. They want us to believe that anyone who has ever copied software is the moral equivalent of pickpocket, and I don't think they're going to have much success there.
Also, think about this - people will never feel guilty about ripping off Microsoft or Adobe when they perceive such contempt from these companies for their patronage. When Microsoft, Adobe or other software companies treat their customers like customers instead of potential thieves and "consumers" to have punative and restrictive licensing schemes forced down their throats, they might find people less likely to violate their licensing and be willing to pay for the software. When they charge reasonable prices for software, then people will be likely to just pay it. $400 or whatever for M$ Office is not a reasonable fee. $600 for Adobe Illustrator is not a reasonable fee. Not for the average person. You buy three "professional" packages for your computer and you've already paid more for software than you paid for the computer it runs on - and asking for people to pay more money for an intangible thing than for the tangible thing they run it on is never going to fly.
And that's ONLY if you are of the stance that click-through's are legally binding. Not to mention. Prove I saw the click through. What if I got a piece of software, edited the binary prior to running it, never saw the click through. What then, I can duplicate the process, I've never read, any licensing or installation text, I am not bound.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
In response to copyright awareness week, consider taking part in Copyleft Awareness Week. After all, how can you trust an organization that refers to it's "friends" in quotes?
--Ben
This is nothing more than an attempt by an organization created by corperations to enforce US copyright laws. I cant see how they can do this considering they are not a law enforcement agency. The only thing the BSA should be able to do is send the DA after you to press criminal charges of copyright infringement, then it would be the burden of the DA to prove that you violated the law. As far as a civil suit goes, what can they sue for? Breach of contract? and if they did those damn EULA's have so much crap in them a judge would probably nullify half of it. It will take time and money, but, how many people sitting on the jury will have unlicensed software and be sympathetic? anyway .. my $0.02
Hehe, yeah, if the licenses are contract click through's are completely un-enforcable. I'm in no way compelled to show you a copy of my contract if youlost yours. I'll through mine away to and neither of us are bound to it any longer.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
As a Management/IT Consultant I have performed Software audits at companies. The BSA is group of 13 software companies (Micro$oft being the biggest) that are trying to use their collective muscle to increase revenues. They use the BSA as a front to scare people into compliance. If you want to ensure compliance, which is not necessarily a bad thing, check out Attest Systems. They have the most reasonably priced software audit tools available. As a Linux Newbie, the better alternative is to go OSS.
--Eric
An awful lot of people are either complaining about how the BSA ignored their past employers for violations, or how the BSA went after them for "lots of money." Bah. Wait until you hear my story.
I work as a Sr. UNIX Administrator for a very large (Fortune 100) company that shall remain nameless for all the obvious reasons. I plan to leave soon, just as quickly as I settle upon a new opportunity in this less-than optimal job market.
Microsoft is currently auditing us. Granted, that is not what Microsoft or we are calling it; rather, Microsoft is "helping us to determine our licensing needs" but that is just a sugary title for what is really going on.
What is really going on is this: this company has long made an unofficial policy of pirating software. Factual, verified (by me) examples include:
* A single MSDN subscription CD of Office 2000 being installed on virtually every PC in a particular department (over one hundred machines)
* Remote sites throughout the United States being sent CD-R copies of software such as Microsoft Project and being told that it is OK to deploy it on all their PCs
* Numerous Windows Terminal Servers being setup for use by Sun workstation clients, each running Office, Project, and Visio - with at best only a handful (read: less than five) of licenses apiece, with no CALs at all - and definitely not enough licenses to cover the 300+ workstations that use them
* Mass upgrades of PCs from Windows 9x to Windows 2000, with nary a license in sight
* Another department, supposedly responsible for license compliance documentation, cannot now seem to lay their hands on any more than a third of the licenses that supposedly exist - thus leading to a deficit of more than 2,000 unlicensed copies of Office, Project, Visio, and Acrobat.
In my department alone, which is one of the smaller ones at this company, I estimated that we are looking at an easy $400,000 to "true up." Nevertheless, the departments are busy engaged in a finger-pointing battle, each blaming responsibility for license compliance on someone else. Upper management has completely ignored the issue, and as the deadline of July 31 draws ever closer, it is becoming rapidly apparent that this debacle may prove of truly colossal proportions.
If I am a business owner, why am I obligated to submit to such nonsense?
--
"I'm don't know exactly what an AS/400 is, but I'm pretty certain I wouldn't want one up my ass" --Lou
When you say personal machines, do you mean machines that are actually owned by the primary user?
Makes me think of the following war story: I worked at a company that hired a few consultants who brought their own machines in. On the day of a BSA audit, one of the contractors left his laptop unattended for a couple of hours, during which one of the auditors started going through it. The auditor was still on when the consultant came back, and needless to say, he wasn't pleased.
Consultant: Get off my notebook.
Auditor: I see you have X, Y, and Z. Do you have licenses for these packages?
[note: we hired consultants who have software that we don't - they should be responsible for their own machines]
Consultant: I know who you bastards are, and I don't have to answer to you. Nobody touches my notebook but me. Get out of my cubicle.
Auditor: Sir, you are interfering with an official BSA audit. Please be patient while I finish installing this monitoring software...
[Other auditors and employees start homing in on the disturbance.]
Consultant: I won't warn you again.
[Moment of silence, then...]
[Cursing, sounds of something tearing, loud scuffle, followed by a dull *thud*.]
At this point, I tried to see what had happened, but the crowd outside his cubicle was too tight for me to get a good view. Moments later, the consultant emerged from the crowd, into the open arms of security guards, but with a strange look of triumph on his face and notebook computer clutched under his arm. A dented metal curtain rod followed shortly after (now in my possession, which I affectionately call my "BSA Stick").
I never saw the consultant again.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Use their annonymous tip line. Report that your local courthouse is using illegal software. But just give the address and claim the violations are in the hundreds. Esp if you call from right outside the courthouse. Somehow I think it'd be amusing. "Your honor that computer you're using is illegal." Wham. "Contempt. Go to jail." Sorry daydreaming now.
Thats great. Wonderfull. Stupendous! You have pointed out a type of hypocracy that ...well.. that has absolutly nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Good job!
Nowhere in the question is the GPL mentioned. Nowehere in the question is there any talk of pirated software.
The question here is about auditing. Its about searching. Its about a team of people from a hostile organization comming in and gettin gthier grubby hands all over someones equipment. Its about whether this is a reasonable or even legal form of enforcement.
What gives these people the right to do that? Are they just getting away with it because they instill fear, or do they have some real legal backing?
this is the real question at hand. Just because you think I may be doing something that infringes upon your rights does that mean you should be able to infringe upon my rights and inconvinience me to satisfy your questions? How much evidence of such wrongdoing should you need before I can be required to let you dig around for evidence (thus making my life more difficult and giving you access to things that I would never consent to you having access to).
Now lets make this more interesting. University computers may at times have student information. SSNs, Grades, Home phone numbers etc etc. Did you know that some of this information is often protected by law? Even within Universities there is often discussion of how some of this data can be passed around legally to employees, and restrictions on access to the information only as part of ones job (need to know basically).... how do those laws apply to this situation?
Frankly, it may be illegal for the university to consent to such an audit, unless the audit was legally mandated.
Messy... my advice to the person involved... bring all this to the legal department. Universities get sued all the time for various things and thus tend to keep a department of lawyers around. Talk to them say "FERPA" (or FURPA...ive never seen the acronym written, but it comes up in meetings).
-Steve
(A university sysadmin)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You are auniversity, right? You MUST have some IP of your own, right? Well, go the the exact same judge that the BSA goes to and present the exact same legal work tha they do and "audit" the BSA offices for illigal copies of your code.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Regardless of the fact that it's a state law, rather than a national one...
It's the _police_ that can come in and search your house. The BSA is nothing but a private organisation, created to fuck with things they have no right to touch.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Interesting, so if the price of PCs went up, there would be less piracy? :)
/.: Is software piracy (aka copyright infringement) immoral? Most here should already know it's illegal, but those who do it anyway either don't care, or are doing it to prove a point (my guess is the majority are of the former opinion.)
Seriously, I think you've struck on a point here that's rarely addressed on
I know I shouldn't respond to sigs, but I found it funnily ironic when I misread your tagline as:
"Windows - Free for over 6 years..."
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The BSA like bad publicity about as much as vampires, bats, and cockroaches like sunlight. Especially when it comes to poor public agencies. Unless you are at a well-funded private school, like
Yale, you can probably put them off for awhile, while you find you licences, and get as many people as you can on free software.
Back up your Windows box using raw sector by sector backup. This can be done with a Unix machine having the drive attached to it, or a Unix OS booted from CD on the host machine, using the dd command. You can transfer the mass of sectors to other storage media or over the network wherever you like. Now encrypt the backup. Then wipe the machine off so that every sector is written with binary zero. Finally, install Linux on the machine (Red Hat will be fine, for example) for the duration. Now's your chance to really diddle around with the system and see what happens when you do things like resetting it over and over without a clean shutdown, now that you have a sacrificial OS install. When the software police come around to check your machine, let them have a piece of that. Later, when the coast is clean, you can decrypt and restore your backed up copy by reversing the techniques previously used.
If you don't have the time to do this, or are just not sure you'd be able to get it back, then buy a new hard drive and swap it for the one in there now, and take the old hard drive home and hide it. You can still do the Linux install trick on the new hard drive during the investigation period, or just do a nice clean install of Windows from the legal copy you have the CD, book, license key, and that fancy shmancy authentication certificate for.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Record it all. The legal notices, phone calls, etc. If they send lawyers over, videotape it. Police? Videotape it. Webcams are preferred since even if they smash your cameras the footage you've already captured has been streamed onto the net. Cameras make oppressive forces nervous. Viewers won't see people defending their copyrights from pirates, they'll see a BSA lead gestapo terrorizing a university.
Oh, also. Try the angle of EULAs not being legally binding. You're batting about 50/50 based on previous court cases whether or not EULAs are legally binding contracts. EULAs are those things you click past that say the copyright holder or any assignee (BSA) have a right to audit your systems, not to mention also say you own a license to use the software and not in fact your own private copy.
Obviously you should have lawyers working hard on this.
Perhaps to minimize your liability in the event of an audit, on non-critical machines (such as machines that are sitting idle, or just used for web browsing, or whatever) you could install a Linux distro on them. If you were planning to migrate your servers from NT, now might be a good time to expedite it.
Like the subject says. That's what the letters BSA really means.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I am a huge proponent of OSS and will use Open SOurce software over commercial. (Our company runs on Linux and NetBSD). At other jobs I've had, if people chose to use proprietary software, I enforced the licenses like the Gestapo. If you chose to use commercial software, you must play by the rules. Companies that use Open Source have no worries.That's the freedom. We are one company that will NEVER be visited by the BSA.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
When a company I worked for elected to comply with the audit, they learned that proof of ownership (license) consisted of Invoices. Retail box didn't count, holographic anti-piracy certificate of ownership didn't count. Field staff purchased software put on expense account didn't count -- couldn't prove it was not actually his personal copy.
Get a good lawyer.
BTW -- we settled with a US$25,000. fine and a promise to certify each year for the next 3 years that we were still "clean."
Denise
Will manage Novell network for money.
Simple economics. If Abe can sell software cheaper
than Barry because Barry's paying full price for
licenses and Abe's not, Abe wins. So Barry's got
a choice: he can wait for Abe to put him out of
business, he can start "pirating" as well, or he
can turn Abe in. Given that the last is the least
risky, what's wrong with it? Look at it from
Barry's point of view: isn't he pretty stupid to
have let his competititor find out what he was up
to?
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Would it be possible for the Adaware program to learn how to cripple, corrupt, or uninstall the audit software on the machine, or just take a flying jump to one of the many available GPFs or BSoDs available if it detects the auditware running?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Also... in about two months' time, Microsoft's new license terms will kick in - and in spite of their claims, it appears that these new licenses will be much more expensive than the old ones for many.
So, let's combine steep new licensing fees with a quasi-police force that has the power to both presume guilt unless proven innocence (when certain programs are in use) and levy heavy fines. Suddenly you have offered people a powerful incentive to move away from the software products of the BSA's sponsors. Remember when it was dangerous to use free software? Stuff like "who do I sue?" The answer is now clear: if you use proprietary software, the vendors get to sue you . Now it's more dangerous to use proprietary software - if you lose a few licenses, you might have to pay millions.
Simultaneously with the increased risks of using proprietary software, an alternative has become available! Free software is finally becoming mature enough to use seriously at the desktop. Yes, it would have been better if it was ready earlier. But KDE3 is out, GNOME2 is almost out, Open Office is usable and its few burrs will be off soon, Abiword 1.0 is out (without tables, but that shouldn't take that long to add), KOffice is out (with weak MS Office interoperability, but that will be improved quickly I'm sure), Mozilla 1.0 RC1 is out (with 1.0 soon to come out). Evolution is quite impressive (or use Mozilla's email reader). The programs can be used now, they'll have more polish before the end of 2002, and they'll be quite nice by mid-2003. I particularly like the cross-platform applications, because they make it easier for organizations to "phase in" the replacements. Someone using Mozilla and Open Office on Windows will find it much easier to switch to GNU/Linux or FreeBSD.
No, this is NOT enough to replace proprietary systems everywhere; there are many specialized applications that will require Windows, etc. But it will be much easier to show compliance when there are fewer of those machines.
Of course, this could all be a last gasp. Perhaps Microsoft expects everyone to switch from their products soon, and wants to try to extract as much money as possible while their competitors complete their maturing. Perhaps they expect that in mid-2003 organizations will begin switching quickly, and they want to sell (or re-sell) as much as they can before the alternatives are ready. I doubt they expect to really lose the market, but they certainly want to saturate the market to make it harder for anyone else to enter it.
I would say that "site-wide" licenses for Microsoft's products by companies (as they're usually written), and similar licenses effectively preventing Linux pre-installs by PC manufacturers, should be summarily ruled as illegal. These licenses fundamentally discriminate against competitors, because Microsoft gets money even when a customer chooses to use a competitor in a particular circumstance. IBM originally only leased their computers, instead of selling them, as a way of preventing customers from practically switching to a competitor, and that was ruled illegal. The same should be true for any contract that, when widely applied, prevents competition. Without these competition-preventing contracts, Free Software would probably spread much faster. But if customers continue to be treated as the enemy, they may consider alternatives far more seriously.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Not only does Linux cure the "BSA blues", it may even cause M$ to put a leash on BSA when they realize the end result of BSA activity is to ditch BSA members' products.
And I hope North Carolina doesn't follow suit. However, please note that this law applies to police--not to the thugs at the Business Software Alliance. They can still sue your butt in court if they think you've pirated software, but my reading is that they can't use these laws to waltz into your home/office/cave/bunker without your knowledge or permission.
Of course, the whole point of the "audit" is that it is a fishing expedition designed to see just how much they can extort out of you for any violations, real or imagined. The whole IANAL thing applies here, but I don't see what they can do if they ask for an audit and you tell them to go away. Sure they can keep pestering you, but I don't see that they would have any right to do so. Indeed, I would be surprised if you couldn't get a restraining order against them and be done with it.
Wiser people with deeper insights are welcome to enlighten me on the subject.
What is your Slash Rating?
I don't really know much about the way these sorts of things work, but while the legal dispute rages, couldn't you take advantage of the delay and destroy the evidence?
Utilities for wiping the contents of PCs matching and exceeding requirements for security in the Department of Defense are freely availible, so I'm thinking, why not just delete your habeas corpus such that no investigators will ever be the wiser?
Of course, destroying evidence might also be a crime, but you could always destroy whatever evidence might have proved that you destroyed evidence.
And so infiniditum...
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Um, if I'm hanging out in a house owned by a landlord, and he doesn't think I have the right to be there (i.e., didn't sign a lease), then he can very well ask to see the contract. If I have a valid contract, I can stay. If I don't have one, the landlord can call the police.
I don't see how it's any different.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
But if you're a small to mid-sized company, take a long hard look. You can do a quick roll-out, but not to stick it to the SBA. Do it for the RIGHT reasons.
A transition isn't quite as traumatic as it might seem on the face. When we needed to add an additional workstation (KVM switched) to each CSR's desk the rollout was done for about $250 apiece - most of which was for the KVM switch and cables. Each box was only $100, an old refurb. The experiment was nice, but I expected a slew of support calls. Lo and behold, there are a lot fewer!
Oh, there were issues. A little bugginess in KDE 2.2.2, a printer problem here and there. When inquiring about stability (reboot frequency), people bitch about Windows. I asked about Linux and smiled at the replies:
"Oh, I like it. It doesn't crash."
"I've never rebooted it. Am I supposed to?" (3 months+ uptime)
"Huh? Go away, I hate you."
Now I have people asking for Linux. Is this or that available, yadda yadda. It's growing here, and I'll happily replace a 1GHz Pentium III w/256MB RAM running Windows with an old 233MHz Pentium MMX w/64MB RAM running Linux. The 1GHz box becomes a Linux server, the license goes into a filing cabinet, and everyone's happy.
Do a complete IT assessment, soup to nuts. Take a long, hard look at your licensing and TCC (total cost of compliance). Are there tenable replacements for the software you're currently using? Can you improve performance AND save money with a migration to Linux (or BSD or whatever)? If so, where? Servers or workstations or both? Timetable.
I believe that I can get rid of every single Windows box in my company. I've got 2/3 of mission-critical applications running on Linux. One more and it's on like Donkey Kong.
I'm sorry to inform you that, while you have some rights in theory, in practice none of them will do you any good, and for all intents and purposes, you are, and have been from the moment you first installed commercial software, the BSA's ass toy.
All the frightened whining and speculation aside, it comes down to this; if you don't do what they demand, they'll sue you, and you can't afford the kind of sueing they can dish out. Not by a long shot. Don't be too comforted by any supposed "relucance" on the part of the BSA to test their authority in court. That authority has already been tested quite adequately by others. Not that your college administrators (one of the more notoriously spineless subspecies of human beings) would even consider standing up to them.
No, my friend, what you have here is an example of the real cost of commercial software. It's part of why Richard Stallman is so incoherenly pissed off all the time. When you chose to use Windows instead of Linux, and Word instead of Emacs, you chose wrong. And this is just one of the many, many very good reasons why.
-David
We're on the road to Tycho.
Like that Japanese student, who was dressed as Elvis for some costume ball, and got shot when asking for directions... Guess how that went..
See the CAW logo license and then my homepage.
Yeah, this is somewhat unrealistic however it would be enormously funny. Let them waste money looking at Linux machines.
"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
No BSA story is complete without linking to this unverified horror story of a BSA raid.
Bleh!
"Does anyone know if this works?"
Yes - but the cable company does not drive around the neighborhood with some kind of scanner. They use an instrument called a Time-Domain Reflectrometer to do a thing called, not suprisingly, Time-Domain Reflectrometry.
How it works is somewhat like this - the TDR instrument must be connected to the cable line feed end. The instrument launches an electrical pulse over the cable then listens for 'echoes' - kind of like a radar. If it hits a tap in the line, hits a load, or hits an open (unconnected) cable, an echo is produced which is detected by the unit. They can measure the echos and see how many feet down the line is the tap.
"Do they actually do this?" Yes again, but it is not as easy as they would like you to believe.
Theoretically, this instrument can detect almost anything that is attached to the cable. In practice, it is a lot harder to catch tappers since the technician doing TDR on the line must distinguish between what is supposed to be on the lines and what is not. He almost has to 'map' the reflections and then come back later and see if the TDR 'profile' has changed to detect a tapper.
TDR is blocked by the line amplifiers they use to boost the signal on the cable lines. It has been almost 20 years since I did any work on cable systems, but at that time it was a real pain to shimmy up a pole, undo the cable from the amplifier and then run the TDR. This disrupted the service for the customers on the branch we were testing, and most of the 'tappers' we caught were in reality people whose cables became disconnected from the set-top boxes or got cut while digging in the garden. They all did not know why their reception suddenly became so poor!!
In the end we limited TDR to analyzing lines that had signal problems, and we generally depended on disgruntled neighbors to find people stealing signal. The TDR could help us find taps, but in a couple cases the tappers were real smart and used a high impedance amplifier piggybacked on our line, which would not show up on TDR. This approach does not produce a nice clean signal one would get from a properly split and terminated cable, but it got the job done.
There was talk of some super TDR system that could be run on the whole system from the head end, but I have not seen or heard of one in use. Remember I am describing the state of the art circa 1982, and much has surely changed, so that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
As for vans driving around picking up signals - the last I heard of such a thing was from the late '70s when HBO was broadcast over microwave, and various small cable companies and hotels would pick up the signal and distribute it over their systems. One could get downconverter kits and plans to make a box that would let you pick up HBO without a subscription. The box you could mount on your antenna mast had a local oscillator that produced a signal that would downconvert the HBO microwave signal to channel 2 VHF.
The trucks had radio direction finders that homed in on the local oscillator frequency from the downconverter boxes. I had a friend who had one set up and he actually got caught, and received a summons in the mail to appear in court.
He actually showed up in court without an attorney. He was asked to verify where he lived and evidence was produced against him that a certain frequency was radiating from his property, one which could be used to illegaly downconvert HBO. My friend got his turn to testify and much to the suprise of the prosecuting attorney, he produced an Extra class ham radio license. He then submitted a page from the ARRL Handbook showing the RF spectrum priveleges given to different classes of Amateur licenses. The frequency in question was in the broadcast privileges for his class of license! He then said that in this case the evidence against him was circumstantial. He admitted that he was "performing experiments in those range of frequencies" and went on to add that he was soon going to broadcast regularly at that frequency.
Case dismissed.
And what a fun EULA - there's a bunch of countries it can't be exported to "Cuba, Indian, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Montenegro, North
..... plonking it on as a warhead in it's own right is I guess OK :-)
.... so download a copy or 10 today and pop in in the email if you don't like it - each and every time you don't like it ....
Korea, Pakistan, Serbia, Sudan or Syria" presumably "Indian" is new country somewhere.After all it would be really bad if Montenagro had to pay for their software (actually I kind of imagine SENDING GASP to a country might be considered an act of war).
You also can't use it for the development of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons for for missile technology
In other parts it warns you that the software is "NOT FAULT TOLERANT" (which I take to mean has bugs [a great admission to note in a law suit]) and one is not to use the software in places where it's failure might be a bad idea (aircraft, nuclear facilities, weapons, life-support etc) - having a heart-attack when you see the bill from the BSA is apparently OK though.
Also if you disagree with any of the terms or the EULA you are apparently supposed to return the software to them within 10 days
As a shortterm solution: bring in the lawyers.
As for the private machines i wonder, why the owner of those shouldn't have a say in this. I know very well, that i wouldn't admit them to my computer on that net, and i would step up the stakes quickly (knowing that i don't have anything remotely illegal on that box, being able to pay a lawyer, and that i would carry the story to the press to cause maximum damage in negative PR). Also i doubt that their auditing tool runs under Linux.
The longterm solution of course is: avoid software licenses, that allow the BSA into your house. If a softwaremaker doesn't give out other licenses don't use that software and tell your students that they have to use alternatives (there are alternatives out there) since you don't want to risk having your university turned upside down again. Also make everyone on the net sign statements that they wont install any software without consulting your IT-Department, and that they'll have to pay up for any costs resulting from breaking that rule.
I can't understand how any organisation can give that kind of power over them (namely to shut them down with a barricade of audits and legal bullying) to the BSA.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
(* Did you note the part in the indivudial article where the writer said they were also auditing personally owned computers? *)
Nope! I guess I missed that one. (I did read it.)
However, that is not the same as going into people's homes.
Table-ized A.I.
(* And you know this how? Simply because some knob says something doesn't make it true. *)
...... else ......
We are studying the situation as presented, not putting this guy on trial. People are calling him a turn-coat based his description, so I can defend him based on his description, no?
I could word it as an IF statement:
If dude_was_telling_truth then
But, I figured the context was understood by all.
Table-ized A.I.
But I *don't* want others to respect my licenses.
In fact, I want them to act freely, as they see
fit, in accordance with the dictates of their
conscience, and to leave me in peace.
When I release software, I don't apply any
license. I just release it. Then it is free.
And when I write software for someone else,
who buys exclusive rights, I charge more.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
reminds me of a (true) story from my past, a distant relative of mine was the local NZ equivalent of the FCC inspector who chases down illegal transmitters (both he and I were hams which was how I heard him tell this story).
.... there was nothing special about this pole untill he looked behind it and noticed a camoflauged wire that went down the pole and disapeared into the ground - someone was onbviously stealing power. Following the wire (it was buried) he went into a nearby barn where he found a still with a noisey thermostat .... he went and grabbed the farmer and explained the problem, then helped the farmer put some caps on the thermostat to stop the emissions ... he claimed the international radio regs protected the 'confidentiality of radio transmissions' and he couldn't turn the guy in ... however I suspect a flagon or two of the local hooch may have been involved :-)
He was chasing some annoying sparky interference out in the country near where he lived, it was being radiated from a power line and he tracked it down to a particular pole
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a software solution. Create a login screen that explains what the user is agreeing to by logging on. Make sure that "installing unauthorized software incurs a $100,000 fine" and "This machine is to be used for educational purposes only."
Alternatively, you could print up an agreement, and tape it to the table, near the machine. Then write "Click here to accept", and draw an arrow to the power button.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your rights depend greatly on your state. Colorado has a "make my day" law and lethal force is considered justified against any intruder, armed or unarmerd, if you felt threatened. Since "feeling threatened" is highly subjective, and is very different from knowing you were threatened because the intruder displayed a weapon and intent, it effectively covers everything but inviting your neighbor in for coffee then blowing him away as he crosses the threshold.
That was clearly the legislative intent - the law was only passed after several high profile cases where DAs prosecuted homeowners who were "too quick" to use lethal force against malicious intruders. The state legislature said that, in a private residence, the benefit of the doubt always goes to the occupant.
But in other states, you can't use lethal force even when threatened. You have an obligation to retreat until you are literally backed into a corner before you use force to defend yourself.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
That might indeed be the key -- for the BSA to unwittingly attempt its extortion on a university that just happens to be chock full of lawyers, or worse yet, law students in need of a term project ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
If you want your company to be able to avoid any BSA audit, there are a few things you can do.
The first thing is never buy any piece of software that's represented by the BSA, or at any rate don't buy it directly. Buy it through an intermediary.
Second, never register software with the manufacturer. It's hard to demand that you give someone a copy of a contract (the EULA?) if they never know you have one.
Third, set up secure areas in your company. If you have a machine running BSA-audited software in an unsecure area, then have all the licenses available right there. If they want to go further, tell them they need a search warrant, and you'll see them in court.
Fourth, if they decide to do an audit, be sure to have the senior person sign an NDA or something else like that. Be sure that your NDA contains high penalties and that you have the right to search their premises whenever to verify. Be sure to bring up that NDA in court.
Finally, if they did get that audit, and you did get the NDA, be sure to audit the BSA at least once a month. They'll be such happy campers. They know stuff about your company by checking your machines. I'm sure those criminals are selling it.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Laughing my ass off...
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
You'll probably win against MS funded BSA?
The United States Federal Government couldn't win against MS in it's own country! Here is a real reading of your scenario:
Your lawyer: You have an airtight legal case, lets go win!
MS legal: hmmmm. Their case is airtight, lets go to plan B. Depose them to death.
Your lawyer: bad news, they're deposing everybody in the university. We have to have a lawyer present. Let's see... three hours per student, twenty thousand students, $200/hr legal counsel. It's gonna cost 800 mill, because you have to have a lawyer present at the depositions too.
MS can afford it for one high profile case, can you?
Let's say you bought the proper legal insurance (you didn't, but let's just pretend you did buy one with an $800,000,000 dollar cap). That's still only round one.
Let's say that you didn't have to spend any more than that. Let's also say that you didn't have anything at all. They'd just hire a student, or plant one. Then they don't have to pay your legal bills, because you have to pay theirs -- because they found their own planted illegal software.
Remember, this hasn't even gone to trial, and you're out nearly one billion. Actually, you are out a billion, because you cover more than legal fees.
So you go to court, and the judge says, "No fine, just buy that one software license. Case closed."
That's the very best you can hope for, and you're bankrupt. This is the big stick that they're wielding. I've seen it used before, and it'll be used again.
You simply cannon win in civil court against someone with unlimited funds. Period. Remember, MS FALSIFIED EVIDENCE IN FEDERAL COURT AND PERJURED THEMSELVES and got away with it.
What kind of chance do you have?
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
I'm saying that expecting people to hang on to thousands of stupid little documents, which are not needed for any other sort of purchase, for years and years in a field like computing is insane and plain wrong.
Think about it...if the car's, say, 4 or 5 years old, there's no point in making sure it's legally purchased, right? Wrong. That's just plain rediculous.
Cars are expensive and dangerous in the wrong hands. Word is cheap (in comparison) and poses little threat in the hands of a "joy-typist". Are you suggesting that it's okay for someone to come into your office and demand receipts for every sub-$500 item? Do you have proof of purchase for the photocopier? The desks? The lightbulbs?
More to the point: why the hell should you? What happened to burden of proof? Is the world under such dire threat from software piracy that the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has to be suspended for this most evil of all crimes? Perhaps the BSA should apply to have hearings held before a miltiary tribunal.
Or perhaps you should get a clue instead.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Well, nobody asked for them in any particular order! Besides, the hints wer wrong as police is not a member of the federal government, and is thus not a part of the executive branch. :)
I can top that. The first person to be pulled over at a radar speed trap in Western Australia was the then Postmaster General. He promptly took the operator of the radar gun to court for operating an unlicenced transmitter, and won, which made any evidence gained by this illegal act (to wit, said PMG's alleged velocity) inadmissable in court.
In theory, applying a radar gun to your person (through the windscreen of your car) could be named assault with your choice of `harmful radiation' or `electric rays' under our Criminal Code. I don't think anyone's paid a QC to ram this one through yet.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I got a few letters from M$ accusing me of selling computers without the proper licenses. They looked like form letters so I just threw them out. I never heard from them again. I Think everyone should handle M$ and the B$A the same way.
http://Lenny.com
Why sue? Just walk up to the next 9-plus-rated cutie you see and confiscate their pants because they weren't carrying a receipt for them.
If they contest your ownership of their pants, reply that they're evidence anyway, regardless of how it's settled. It would help to own a clothing store, but sheer effrontery would probably get you over a lot of hurdles... or maybe slapped about like you've never been slapped about before... (-;
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yes, there is. Buy only MIPS-based server and workstation hardware. Nothing that Microsoft sells runs on MIPS except PDAs. (-:
If a group as large as a uni did that, it would rapidly make things like StarOffice more portable.
Oh, and they'd slice a significant amount off their electricity bills. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Would we be talking technical here, or practical? If practical, whatever goes into the Federal Register effectively becomes law. And that's <ghasp> pages a day of fine print.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I want to see someone successfully argue that since the RIAA taxes every CD-writer that's sold (at least in the USA), that tax comprises permission to copy any RIAA-owned works you please (with that CD-writer).
Greedy scumbags need a reality check. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yes, that would be hilarious, wouldn't it? `Damn, the CD didn't auto-run. Where's the registry editor...? Oh, well, I'll just have to open a DOS box and do it there. Umm... are we still in Kansas?'
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Now bugger off.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There is something out there called "FreeCAD", and then there are others.
Can't recall their names outright, but if you want it, I can try to search for them.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
There is nothing wrong with making people laugh. There is something wrong with deriding those who "fall for it" when trolled, however. THAT sets up a situation where people are afraid to rebut the real genuine spreaders of disinformation. Without knowing the potential troller's past opinions, you can't tell he's a troller. Real people exist who are either ignorant enough to spread the worst kind of misinformation believing it to be genuine, or are evil enough to do it deliberately. Either way, letting the mis-information stand unrebutted in a public forum is a bad thing.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Actually, the BSA does reimburse the businesses they audit if they are in compliance. The problem is that you need a huge amount of paperwork in order to comply, and if just one computer is missing that paperwork.. then you're screwed.
It's that the 1GHz box is waaaay waaay waaay overpowered for what the users need.
They run 2 applications on the Linux box: a small java applet and a database client. They don't run anything else on the Linux box other than a bit of light web surfing, checking email.
These boxes would be pokey doing other stuff - running KOffice or whatever. I'm going to bump up the RAM on the Linux boxes to when I can scare up some more SIMMs, but these boxes are doing their job and the users are happy.
For my setup, this mix of hardware works splendiferously. As to whether it works for other shops - depends on your needs.
For me, 64MB of RAM and a 233MMX would not be adequate. But for our CSR's, it's fine. If their needs change - well, 400MHz boxes with 128MB of RAM are pretty cheap too.
Why get a top-of-the-line box for a user running two small applications?
I like the concept -- it needs a little work, but I see the potential. The #1 weakness is that it relies on BSA business practices remaining as-is. I think the increasing threat of OSS on the desktop is going to rain on the BSA parade, with or without an army of Linux consulting commandos.
To really make it work, you would need to custom build a Linux distro for the explicit purpose of replacing a Windoze/Office PC, being sure to include the basic capabilities that everyone needs. To assist in rapid deployment, it would have to allow the installer to auto-discover the printers & file servers. Then look for directories that are likely to have documents. Keep those and nuke everything else, while converting the file system to ext3. The whole process would have to involve minimal interaction, and probably a combination of USB gizmos to facilitate scratch space or quickie Ethernet cards (nobody is going to have the time to take apart cases and fumble with PCI "plug-and-pray").
Maybe the install process takes whatever files are kept and encrypts them with GPG. At the end of all this, the BSA folks would be faced with a bunch of locked-down PCs, not a single BSA program to be found, no way to log in, and nothing to be learned from the users' old files. It might take a little while to train all the users on the replacement software, but given the outrageous cost of BSA fun & games, this extreme concept is probably better than dealing with the BSA, even for companies that are not actively trying to steal anything.
I would choose a slightly more adversarial name, like "DefCon 1", "The L Team", "Delta Force", "OSS Ninjas", or something like that.
I even have the TV commercial worked out: It starts with the good guys receiving a phone call from an IT manager who has just received a BSA nastygram. The alarm sounds, the geeks start grabbing laptops as they run towards the hangar, where a jet is starting up. As the plane takes off, the commentator says "Are you under attack from the BSA? Don't just sit there, call in an air strike!"
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From an admin standpoint, thin clients seem the way to go. A centralized server for x and other apps. Any suggestions on what you've found useful?
...fine the organisation for not having docco for the copy of Windows that they just installed over the top of an actual useful OS.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing