Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

An anonymous reader sends us to ZeroPaid, which seems to be the only site in English to have picked up a story out of France involving Sony and piracy. Except this time the shoe is on the other foot. The small software company PointDev learned that Sony BMG was using a pirated license for one of its system administration tools. PointDev got bailiffs to raid a Sony property and they found pirated software on four servers. The source article (link is to a Google translation of French original) quotes PointDev's spokesman claiming that the BSA believes 47% of software used in corporations to be illegal — whether he is referring to Sony in particular is not clear in the translation.

Comments

Why it does not happen more often?

[Herkum01]

I am surprised that this does not occur more than it does in large businesses like Sony, the scale of the company increases the number of opportunities for this to occur. Also there are more people that have guilty knowledge that something like this occurred. It would only take one of these people to become disgruntled and rat out their employer( for a finder's fee of course).

Re:Why it does not happen more often?

[gnasher719]

OUCH! Even stupeder than taht! Read on, an employee contacted the software company for tech support! How would that be stupid? As an employee myself, who is not working in the purchasing department, I cannot possibly have knowledge whether each piece of software that I am using is properly licensed, but I work under the assumption that all the software is licensed properly. Accordingly, I would feel free to contact someone's tech support if needed. Anyway, having fewer licenses than needed can be explained by negligence; having no license at all means something seriously dodgy is going on.

Use the RIAA's math to figure damages

[eagl]

Use the RIAA's math to figure damages... A single shared 3 minute song is worth many thousands of dollars in damages to the RIAA, so some software that took thousands of man-hours to create ought to be worth a few billion.

Sony needs to put up or shut up.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[History's Coming To]

All I ask is a little consistency....

Either pirating other people's work (software, mp3 etc) is right or wrong. If it's right, then why are you laughing at this, according to half of the /.'ers they have the moral right to. If it's wrong, then they've quite rightly been done and you should go delete any pirated software you have. One of the reasons I switched to Linux is to get software that I couldn't otherwise afford, and do it legally. This story is going to show up a lot of hypocrisy.

Re:Inside Sony

[value_added]

I know for a fact that all the commercial software I have knowledge of is properly licensed.

That may be true, but it's never the "known knowns" that get you in trouble. ;-) Either way, for a system administrator, my compliments on parsing your words as carefully as a recent member of the Justice Department appearing before a Senate subcomittee.

The question for your bosses, on the other hand, is there commercial software about which they have no knowledge that isn't properly licensed? Apparently there is. And that fact reflects badly on the public image of a company, among other things, even if the transgression occurred in someone else's division.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

All I ask is a little consistency.... Either pirating other people's work (software, mp3 etc) is right or wrong. If it's right, then why are you laughing at this, according to half of the /.'ers they have the moral right to. If it's wrong, then they've quite rightly been done and you should go delete any pirated software you have. One of the reasons I switched to Linux is to get software that I couldn't otherwise afford, and do it legally. This story is going to show up a lot of hypocrisy. We're not laughing because they're pirates. Hell, if this was just about anyone else, we'd be bitching about the search being on flimsy pretexts. We're laughing because we hate hypocrites, particularly hypocrites who hack our boxes and sue us without evidence. I hope they throw the book at these clowns.

Re:Inside Sony

[mpe]

I work in one of the US divisions of Sony as a system administrator. I know for a fact that all the commercial software I have knowledge of is properly licensed.

Depending on the exact definition of "commercial software" you happen to be be using then you could be "pirating" quite a bit of software. Just because software is not "commercial" does not mean that it is exempt from copyright.

Re:Inside Sony

[Ecuador]

Yeah, you really back up what you say by posting as an Anonymous Coward.

So, it was probably just a "rogue admin", maybe it was easier to get it pirated than to go through the proper channels, or maybe it was deemed too expensive for what it was offering. In any case it was willful infrigement and I think Sony BMG should pay 150.000 x the price of the software for each violation. Note that the number is not selected randomly - it is the equivalent of the cases where Sony BMG is suing.
I should note that the software in question even offered a 30-day evaluation.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[PopeRatzo]

the BSA believes 47% of software used in corporations to be illegal

The plan is to make every single person on earth an outlaw. This way, "The Law" can be used for purposes of control instead of to facilitate transactions among us as was intended.

There is underway currently the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and it's going from workers to the very rich. Sort of socialism in reverse, and the result will be that the world will become a very unpleasant place in which to live for most of us.

AC posting

[dreamchaser]

Most people when speaking about affairs at their employer are smart to post as an AC.

Ethics, morals and all that jazz.

[jotaeleemeese]

Do you know how much copyright used to last?

14 years.

Yep, 14 years after publication you were free to copy at your heart content any material and publish it.

Now it is death of copyright holder + 100 years. So for most productive people this translates in copyrights that extend for the best part of 150 years.

This is sick, insane, unethical and immoral.

The outrage is not that people in Slashdot seem more willing to endorse piracy more openly than most other people. The real outrage is that elected representatives everywhere have legislated to the current state of affairs (extending to international conventions), that private companies have corrupted copyright to such an extent, and that there are people like you demanding that others conform to a situation that is clearly not sustainable in a social system that prizes cooperation and inventiveness.

People are not pirating stuff because they are bad or unethical. People are pirating stuff because they know they have been screwed and are not willing to pay homage to the screwers.