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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.
Did the servers have rootkits on them as well?
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
I'd classify this under evidence there is a God
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
I'm french so I can provide a more accurate translation:
Selon la Business Software Alliance, une association regroupant les principaux éditeurs du marché, 47 % des programmes utilisés en entreprise le seraient de manière illégale en France...According to the Business Software Alliance, an organization representing the major software companies, 47% of the software used by businesses in France is used illegally.
So 47% is the global number for french businesses, not limited to Sony.
Seen the average EULA lately? I read them - I have to, I'm the IT manager - and I'd estimate that about 60% of the time it's clear whether or not we're covered by purchasing a particular product and using it in a particular way, 20% of the time it's not entirely clear but we're probably OK and 20% of the time I have no freaking idea. Not every piece of software has a license as clear-cut as "One copy per PC".
.exe on the system and expects the administrator to make sense of every single one individually. Now, the BSA might be prepared to go through that list if they think they can make some money by doing so but I can't spare the time.
Ironically, auditing software tends to have the most obscure licensing terms and is frequently next to useless anyway - either because it only goes by what's in the registry for "Add/Remove Programs" (so some dodgy copy of an application which was hacked around and no longer appears in "Add/Remove Programs" won't be caught) or it just gives you a list of every
It is for all practical purposes impossible to put hand-on-heart and say "I can guarantee that we're not using a single piece of pirated software" in any significantly sized business today. About the best you can do is say "I'm pretty sure we're not, however if you can provide evidence that I'm wrong I will be happy to look at resolving the issue - either by using an alternative product or buying whatever it is that we're missing".
I would gladly migrate the entire enterprise over to Free (either speech or beer) software tomorrow for every single business need - it would eliminate that worry at a stroke - but this is the real world and half-decent Free accounting and payroll applications are pretty thin on the ground.
My guess is that someone less than honest installed the application in the past with a pirated key and left the company. Their successor ran into trouble with the application and did the sensible thing - called the vendor.
Since you work for Sony, you should know that Sony/BMG is not Sony. Much like Sony-Ericsson, it is a separate company that is 50/50 owned by two large conglomerates. In S/BMG case, it is Sony and Bertelsmann, and in S-E case it is Sony and Ericsson. In addition, this incident takes place in Europe, so it is more likely to be a former BMG shop anyway.
All I ask is a little consistency....
/.'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.
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
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I used to work for a $12 billion/yr company that had a few issues with licensing. A program that the DBA's used ran $1000 a pop. I was asked to install it by a user on her new system. I told her we didn't have a copy of it in our library. She handed me a burned CD and told me this was the software installer.
;)
I looked at it rather suspiciously and asked her for the license documentation. She handed me a hand written license key on note paper.
I asked her where she got the CD and I gave this guy a call. He was a tech at the corporate offices on the left coast. I asked him about it and asked how many licenses we had. (I was thinking they might have a corporate license and just needed to know who had the app installed)
He replied that the company had 5 licenses. I asked him how many systems it was installed on. "Umm 50 here I think."
Yeah, right. I reminded him that it was not a good idea to install apps without a license. He agreed, but was ordered to do it by the head of the department that uses this thing.
(Management by threat is the standard with this company)
Knowing where this was going I thanked him, told my supervisor, (Who almost had kittens when I filled him in), broke the CD in front of him and another witness and then told the user that the app wasn't going on her system.
Moving forward, I have second hand information that this problem was reported up the line twice to the VP who managed my org. I personally told him that we had at least 35 illegal copies, (installed by the users themselves when we refused to do it), and that considering the numbers of DBA's and developers in the company, we might be out of compliance to the tune of 1-2 million dollars.
His exact words were:
"I don't want to hear about this. If I hear about this officially, then I'll have to do something about it."
This bozo was dumb enough to say that to me in front of witnesses.
My local group continued refusing to install this thing and kept extensive documentation, (CYA type), regarding this.
Shortly before I left a panicked data call from the CIO came down asking for the number of installs at our site. I had the number of course, but I like to think that someone blew the whistle on them.
Shortly after I left, both the VP I reported to and the CIO either wanted to "Spend more time with their families, or seek new alternatives elsewhere".
I agree, slashdot often publishes comments that are inconsistent with each other (sometimes even completely contradictory!)
It almost seems as if they were written by different people.
...just another pie in the sky left wing hippie running their mouth off between bongs? Something tells me that you are not voting for a Democrat in this year's election...I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
So what did you spend your reward money on?
I've said it before:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=379451&cid=21579069
The recent era of plebs having the opportunity to better themselves whether in wealth or knowledge, and to live freely at the will of no other but subject to uniform laws that apply equally to all, will be seen in the vast scope human history as a short-lived blip that has more to do with the back-to-back industrial/information revolution than anything else. Disruptive tech has always caused upheaval until the it's subverted and the new order is established; welcome to the new order, same as the old order.
The wealth redistribution is just the system returning to ground state after its recent (in historical scope) excitation.