BSA Software Piracy Fight Smacks of RIAA Crackdown

Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich writes "A Business Software Alliance raid on musical-instrument maker Ernie Ball Inc. cost the company $90,000 in a settlement. Soon after, Microsoft sent other businesses in the region around Ball's a flyer offering discounts on software licenses, along with a reminder not to wind up like Ernie Ball. Enraged, CEO Sterling Ball vowed never to use Microsoft software again, even if 'we have to buy 10,000 abacuses.' Similar BSA raids around the country have been provoking strong reactions from put-upon business owners, echoing similar reactions to music-lovers targeted by the RIAA."

Comments

10,000 Abacuses?

[Matti-han]

My dear sir, let me introduce you to something called 'linux'. I favor Kubuntu myself.

Re:10,000 Abacuses?

[joebutton]

Abacuses are extremely reliable. You can always count on them.

Re:10,000 Abacuses?

[Anonymous Coward]

From a related article.

"Beyond hunting for dicey characters buying and selling counterfeits, the BSA also devotes significant attention to other forms of what it calls piracy by business users. The money harvested in these company-by-company crackdowns is not parceled to its members whose copyrights were infringed; the funds stay with the BSA to fuel its operations. (BSA's worldwide settlements soared 53 percent last year to $56 million.)"

I could list a number of reasons why this statement alone pisses me off, but I'd be wasting my breath. I'd be hard pressed to find someone on this site that would disagree with anything I would have to say. Read through the article, see if you can do it without thinking something rotten about the BSA.

Yes, he REALLY meant abacuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on you nerds, he said it for dramatic effect. HE IS NOT GOING TO START SLIDING FUCKING NOBS ACROSS STICKS.

So you can stop saying "no need for abacuses! try linux!"

Authority for raids?

[shawnmchorse]

I've never understood this. The BSA is obviously just a trade group with no authority whatsoever to conduct raids and such. If they decide they need to "raid" a business, then generally they would just have a suspicion that this business 'might' have some of their software installed and some of that software 'might' not be fully licensed. Is that really enough for local law enforcement to go along with it? A lot of the coverage I've read about BSA raids seems to imply that the business involved went along with the raid voluntarily, and I have trouble understanding why any business would do so.

Re:Authority for raids?

[RuBLed]

Like DMCA Title IV Section 408?

Re:Authority for raids?

[nacturation]

It goes like this:

BSA: "We have reliable evidence from a confidential source [read: disgruntled (ex-)employee] that you don't have valid licenses to the software you use."
Company: "You don't have any authority over us. GTFO."
BSA: "Fine."

[BSA starts suit against company, submits evidence to a judge, and during the discovery period requests complete documentation of all software being run on company systems, along with licenses and date of purchase. If company fails to provide, BSA files for a motion to compel or some such legal mumbo-jumbo that basically gives the BSA the judge-approved legal right to take apart every computer and really ruin their day.]

BSA: "According to what we found, it appears you're liable for tens of millions of dollars of damages according to current copyright fines."
Company: "Err... gosh, maybe we overlooked purchasing a few hundred software licenses here and there. Our bad. Say, do you have any kind of compliance deal for companies like ours who accidentally used unlicensed software on every computer we own and where we don't have to admit guilt?"
BSA: "Sure, just fork over $90,000 on top of paying our legal bills and purchasing licenses for all that software we discovered, you admit no wrongdoing, but you also agree to annual audits from here on."
Company: "Yeah, again, our bad... hey, who should we make this payable to?"

[Company makes the payment, BSA cashes it, company buys licenses to all software, and BSA files motion to dismiss suit.]

Dupe

[phayes]

This is the oldest dupe I've seen on slashdot!

Re:Dupe

[RuBLed]

Actually TFS was the "big" dupe, the contents of TFA is at least not.. TFS was extracted from the bottom "past references" because it sounds sensational. (I would even have a hard time finding TFS from TFA if not for Search)

Re:The solution is simple

[Macthorpe]

Yep, if you read TFA, that's what they did. Yep. About 5 years ago.

Seriously, this is old.

Great news

[Slashidiot]

I think this is great news for FOSS people. Up until now, most software vendors have been quite generous on their piracy tolerance. If these companies start pushing it hard, and making people pay, things will start changing.

Many people just download photoshop because that's what they know. If they have to pay for it, there will be a HUGE shift to GIMP. And that's even more true with Microsoft stuff, at least in Spain. I know very few people who have bought a copy of Windows (not counting what came with the computer). But it's easy to pirate, so they go for it. If they faced fines of 1000 euro for it (or had to pay 300 to buy it in the first place), a lot of people would consider linux. Now, both are free (in practice), so price is not a problem when choosing. Factor that in, and things look very different.

So, good news, people will start using what they need, and not the professional (and expensive) tool for home stuff. And that usually means open source.

Ahh!!!

[NickCatal]

Submitted by 'Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich'

Oh my god, Slashdot has become Reddit

2002 News? Really?

[svunt]

Five years is an awfully long time ago. Heads up, editors :)

Can we get a new icon?

[zappepcs]

something with a handgun and a foot?

Re:BSA Tip Line

[bytesex]

I don't have ears, you insensitive clod ! Maybe they could threaten to flood my inbox with those upskirts pics instead.

Not so simple.

[TheLink]

The problem I see is it's not just that. You don't just need money to pay for the software you use, you need money to pay to keep track of it for X years and all the other associated crap. And some of those license thingies are kinda grey or complicated - per server, per client, concurrent clients, users (this could be vague), concurrent users, host, CPU (socketted), CPU core, MHz etc. Not just that, they can change from year to year. IIRC Windows XP Home was previously not for multiprocessor systems, but when multicore x86 CPUs came out, Microsoft said they meant socketed CPUs.

"The BSA considers software pirated if a company can't produce a receipt for it, no matter how long ago it was purchased. Software boxes or certificates of authenticity are no help, because the BSA argues the software could have been obtained from an illegitimate source."

Does that mean even if you have Windows XP and MS Office certs stuck on the PC with a 1:1 cert:install mapping it doesn't count? What idiocy is that? I know lots of businesses will have difficulty retaining receipts and records longer than a few years. Might be in a box somewhere but nobody left in the company will know about it.

Whether the PC was stolen or not, if the cert+ key is real Microsoft etc already have got paid for it.

It could even be a gift, believe me people do donate software. I'm sure many churches and charitable organisations get such stuff. You don't always get receipts for that.

Thing is the BSA might have a different agenda from the companies it represents.

I heard the Microsoft boss in my country handled piracy cases differently - he told off his staff who apparently were going around taking people to court etc. Basically his opinion was these people were happy users of Microsoft software, all his staff needed to do was to convince them to license. Which shouldn't be too hard - "Hi, would you like to pay the $$$$$ per infringing copy (plus bosses risk imprisonment) or $$$ per licensed copy?". ;)

Instant sale. Don't even need to send them any fancy media or boxes. Don't even need to send people to help install and configure the software - they've already done all that work themselves.

Only send in the thugs if they refuse to license after you find out they are noncompliant.

Re:The solution is simple

[Daengbo]

Apparently everyone who knows the case agrees that Ernie Ball didn't intend to pirate. Things like that happen in businesses, especially small ones. Responsibilities move and the software moves with them. People install random stuff without authorization. Receipts get lost (I understand that the BSA requires not only proof of licens but proof of purchase, as well).

Saying "Don't pirate" is easy. Getting a company of any size to reach 100% compliance is utterly painful. It's no different than being autdited by the IRS -- they're going to get you for something.

Re:Seriously though

[Technician]

I work in IT, and I pay for software that I use, if I can't afford it I find something else - its no excuse to copy it.

Do you have a copy of the reciept for every piece of software? That thumb drive that uses an encryption program... which is installed on the PC, where is the reciept for that $10 thumb drive? No reciept is a violation... Just ask the BSA or read the article. There is almost nobody in full compliance. My biggest violation is a lack of reciepts. All my copies of MS Office are in violation except the newest one simply because I haven't kept the reciepts.

These violations are being weeded out as I migrate to Ubuntu and dispose of the obsolete high liability software.

Re:The solution is simple

[Volante3192]

Last time I checked the licencing for the student/teacher edition of Powerpoint (I believe 2003) it allowed installation on three seperate machines.

Then there's the per device and per user licencing.

It'd be easy to keep track of if the only licencing model out there was "one key, one system" but in order to appease big businesses there's volume licencing, and that spread out into other different models. The fact that there are businesses out there who exist simply to keep track of licences says there's something dreadfully wrong with the current system.

Re:10,000 abacuses? How about 10,000 Linux install

[ricegf]

a company was rightfully fined for using Microsoft software illegally

No, a company was fined for not being able to prove they were not using Microsoft software illegally.

Although the EULA doesn't state they must provide a receipt for the software, or that the "Certificate of Authenticity" doesn't certify that the software is authentic (go figure), that is the standard to which Microsoft holds its customers on penalty of lawsuit or (more commonly) extortion.

I received two letters from the BSA in 2003, both warning me that I could be liable for "hundreds of thousands of dollars" if they audit my business and I am unable to prove that every copy of their member company's software was legally purchased. They helpfully offered, "Can your business afford that risk?"

Y'know, I couldn't. I switched to free-as-in-freedom software.

Re:The solution is simple

[deniable]

I knew there was a problem when companies started listing 'licensing engineers' in their schedules of rates.

The REAL question is,

[BlackCobra43]

do the abacuses run Linux?

Re:BSA Tip Line

[oboreruhito]

Submitter sent in the wrong story, I'm assuming. The Associated Press ran a much more recent story yesterday about two things that have come to light since Ernie Ball: 1. The BSA does have a tip line now, with a $1 million reward for whistleblowers. 2. 90 percent of the BSA's $13 million in settlements came not from larger businesses with hundreds or thousands of employees, like Ernie Ball, but from much smaller firms that don't have the legal resources to even begin to fight the BSA, and who arguably don't have the legal representation to even understand the licenses to which they're agreeing. $90,000 isn't as much to Ernie Ball as $67,000 is to the 10-employee architectural firm in that AP story. What's scary is that the BSA is going after pittances - one or two violated licenses - on anonymous employee tips. From the AP article:

BSA enforcement director Jenny Blank disputes the notion that her group is encouraging employees to exploit mere technicalities and "onesy, twosy random noncompliance." That's why, she said, it focuses on the worst offenders. Yet in 2005, her group pursued Mediaport Entertainment Inc. of Salt Lake City, where an audit revealed just two unlicensed copies of Microsoft software. Retail value: $6,500. The BSA pressed for $16,500; the sides reached an undisclosed settlement.

Bottom line: Don't use BSA software, and don't trust your employees. Even if you do nothing but Linux, there's still ways some disgruntled employee can leave behind pirated, or even legal-but-mismanaged (shared folder, circumvented license administration) copies of a BSA program on a few systems, call the BSA, and get his $1 million while you try to get a $20,000 "fine" down to a $10,000 settlement.

GPL restricts distribution only

[CustomDesigned]

While the GPL licenses are some of the more complex in OSS, the provisions affect distribution, not use. Mr. Ball can *use* GPL stuff all he wants without worrying about licensing issues. It is only when he develops the Ball Instrument Manufacturing accounting package based on GPL software and wants to distribute it that he has to be careful.