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BSA's Tactics and Motives Questioned
_Hellfire_ sends us over to Baseline Magazine for a longish article entitled After 20 Years, Critics Question the BSA's Real Motives, which paints the Business Software Alliance in the same colors as the RIAA. "A recent Associated Press story highlighted the fact that 90 percent of the $13 million collected by the BSA in 2006 came from small businesses. Since 1993 the group has collected an estimated $89 million in damages from businesses on behalf of its members, every penny of which it keeps. 'I don't know of a business where you can get away with raiding a customer with armed marshals and expect them to continue to do business with you...' said [Sterling] Ball, who shifted his company to open source software after the raid."
not true. A lot of it is paperwork compliance. Like installing Photoshop on 1 computer. The graphic designed gets a new computer and the old one is sent to a different department without uninstalling. If you're a big company with site licenses and an IT staff that reimages computers daily, no problem. If you're a small business, oops.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
...uhm, According the Sterling Ball, he was only out of compliance by 8%. This would mean he was 92% legitimate. This would seem to indicate that they WERE actually customers.
I find it interesting that there is such a strangle-hold in the software world. It's ridiculously oppressive. It's also amazing to find what people will tolerate. I guess some of the reality is that you rarely know anyone directly who has had the worst of experiences. But it amazes me still that even after a BSA run-in, companies continue to use the software of companies that enable the BSA to operate. In some respects, it seems unavoidable, but it's all about how we got where we are and looking at what it would take to over-throw the systems we have in place now. It would take LOTS to overthrow Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and the rest and switch over to F/OSS or something along those lines. It would lead to better things in the future, but people aren't willing to take short-term, personal hits for long-term, social benefit. Lots of people saw it all coming from far away and long ago, but people wouldn't listen and they still won't listen.
But things seem to be changing... slowly...
I'm sure we'd all like to see lots more free software, but seriously, stop using bullshit excuses to justify it. And DEFINITELY stop fabricating reasons that there is no excuse for proprietary stuff, because that's just bollocks.
However, the argument he should have made is that these long terms in no way "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", which is pretty unarguably true (especially retroactive copyright extension; how exactly the hell is extending the copyright on something a dead person wrote going to encourage that person to write more?). There is no evidence of any kind to demonstrate that Progress is better served by 150-year copyright terms than by 20-year copyright terms.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I worked for a company. With an... unstable boss.
I was basically told to install everything from the one copy of things we had.
Fast fwd a couple years and i get sick of this place and quit.
The unstable boss refuses to pay what i am legally owed upto the day i quit. (no contract or other issues involved)
After a round with the labor board i ended up getting 90% of what i was owed.
So i decided that other 10% was worth my time to cause trouble and report them to the bsa.
called the bsa. told them my story.
They showed up at the business with 2 federal marshalls and inspected EVERYTHING. And ended up fineing them almost $200 thousand dollars.
The company went broke a year later.
Since i reported them. The bsa sent me a nice fat check for around $5000 and change. Took several months all total... Well worth the few hundred i got fucked out of that started it all off.
As an employer... the bsa is an evil money grubbing org with no soul.
As an employee... the bsa is one big fucking hammer you can use to get back at your ex employer.
If you pirate your business software. You should REALLY treat your employees better. But the types of businesses that have license problems. are also pretty shitty to their employees.
So in the end. the bsa = good. (for me)
Keeping certificates is not enough. I worked for a company that got audited once. It was a small business, but run by a pair of lawyers who were sticklers for details. They shredded old paperwork after some number of years, and they got nailed because they had the certificates that came with NT 4.0, but not the receipts.
I honestly believe you could do everything by the book, and they'd still find something to nail you for... Not to mention that the audit costs your business in both time and money.
Seriously, are you guys fucking blind or what? The BSA goes to court and gets a court order to collect evidence for a civil lawsuit that is likely to be destroyed if they just sequester the evidence.. they then take the court order to the local police and ask them to enforce the court order for them. If the local police refuse they are legally allowed to hire private security and do it themselves.. the court order authorizes it. And it's not just the BSA.. I've know people who were "raided" by former employers because they refused to hand over source code that the company claimed they owned. The fact that federal marshals are taking this on now is probably a good thing.. as least you can expect them to be more professional than private security firms.
How we know is more important than what we know.
BSA tends to do raids accompanied by law enforcements. Or was it the other way around? Not sure, but the legal part is on police side, expertise is on BSA side.
Prosecution doesn't take place on site. If police gets suspicious, the ugly part starts (confiscation of hardware, thorough examination etc.).
Ideally, BSA trains police to do this on their own, thus ripping costumers indirectly.
N.B. This is how it works in Latvia (In EU? The state nobody knows about? Never mind). I doubt it differs much from rest of Europe.
As someone who has gone through a rather extensive BSA audit, I cant agree with your comment - all we did to show compliance was produce the license certificates or electronic licenses (via Eopen or similar), no receipts were shown or asked for, and we had no problems with that at all. The audit took a week, they left accepting we were in compliance, and we had no fine to pay. All in all, while no audit is a pleasant experience, this was better than some others I have been through as they went out of their way to not get in our way.
Now, knowing the Slashdot populace, its almost certain that this post will be labeled either as a troll or a paid shill, but its neither - just a different point of view and a different experience.