Why the BSA Is Less Reviled Than the RIAA

Hugh Pickens writes "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a trade group established in 1988 representing a number of the world's largest software makers whose principal activity is trying to stop copyright infringement of software produced by its members, performing roughly the same function for the software industry that the RIAA performs for the music industry. Yet, as Bill Patry, author of a 7-volume treatise on US copyright law and currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, notes on his blog the BSA is a 'far less unpopular organization' than the RIAA because there are three key differences between the BSA's campaigns and the RIAA's. First, BSA's members have always offered their products for sale to the public, through any channel that wants to sell them. Second, BSA's members are consumer-oriented; they try to develop products that respond to consumers' needs, and not, the reverse: focusing on what they want to sell to consumers. Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws. 'I think the fact that the public does not object to BSA's campaign proves my point [that]... people do not want things for free; they are willing to pay for them,' writes Patry. 'It should not be surprising that when consumers are not treated with respect, they react negatively. That's something the software industry learned long ago, and that's why people don't object to the BSA's enforcement campaign.'"

Comments

Value of music vs value of software

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Software has an intrinsic value. To a business, the return on investment from a piece of software is something that can be measured. Spreadsheet software, for example, makes accounting many times easier and cheaper than trying to keep the books in books.

But music (and to a lesser degree video) has no intrinsic value. It is something enjoyed passing time. Like a frisbee at the park or a cup holder in a car. It's something that is nice to have but ultimately unnecessary.

If anti-copyright proponents would be unhypocritical, they would demand that software be downloadable for "sharing" among friends. That they only make this claim for music shows and video shows that there is a fundamental difference between software and music in their minds. I attribute this to the ephemeral nature of music, something which can be enjoyed but in the end has no real value.

Re:Less sympathy for companies

[TheRaven64]

I was surprised by the headline. The BSA's tactic of requiring companies to be audited and then pay large amounts for any product that they can't prove that they own makes them pretty unpopular. The only difference is that they chase companies rather than individuals, so to most individuals they are irrelevant. If you run a small business, I suspect you'll have a lot more hostility towards the BSA than the RIAA. Being able to avoid interacting with the BSA is a very strong argument for persuading a company to adopt an open source stack.

Re:Less sympathy for companies

[Shakrai]

The BSA's tactic of requiring companies to be audited and then pay large amounts for any product that they can't prove that they own makes them pretty unpopular.

They seem to be a pretty popular way for disgruntled IT employees to screw over their employer though. Every BSA audit I've ever heard of or been involved in came about because of some employee or ex-employee with an axe to grind.

I've always wondered what happens if you refuse to let them onto your property. Presumably their only recourse would be to sue you and obtain access to your computer systems through the discovery process. Given the "speed" with which the court system moves I wonder if you could have the whole operation switched over an open source movement by the time it reached that point?

Alternatively what happens if you claim trade secrets or privacy restrictions (HIPAA?) on your computer system?

Re:Less sympathy for companies

[MightyMartian]

My understanding is that if you refuse them access, they'll show up with a sheriff and a court order allowing them access.

We went through one of Microsoft's SAM not-an-audit-but-really-an-audit last spring. I had taken over the tech position, and everything had been in a bloody mess. Worse, most of the licenses had belonged to the organization which the organization I work for had bought. Naturally, there were many supposed licenses which the former tech guy had assured me existed which did not exist, and I ended up uninstalling about fifteen copies of Office 2003 Pro because I simply could not find any evidence that they had been purchased. Fortunately I had several copies of Office Basic and the like (mainly they need Outlook anyways), so I managed to keep within the licenses that I actually had physical evidence of.

Of course, the MS SAM guys are pricks. There was about two months of back-and-forth, and in the end my "rep" (or so this turkey insisted he was) claimed that five of my Server 2003 CALs weren't strictly valid because they were put on a volume license version of Server 2003, and they were retail CALs, and I was either going to have to change them to device CALs or buy five new ones through volume licensing.

At that point I got really pissed off and basically told the guy he was just trying to nitpick to try to get me to spend a couple of hundred bucks for licenses that we already owned, and for which Microsoft had already been paid. The guy did back off, though I think he was pretty pissed that he hadn't got a dime out of us. I in fact did need more licenses for a file server, but after my experience with Microsoft's license extortion department, I said "fuck it", installed a Samba member server, finally mastered Posix-to-Windows ACL mapping, and basically could give a shit. I'm down to one DC per location, enough to handle authentication and roaming profiles, I've installed OpenOffice wherever I can, and basically have no intention of buying any more MS products.

Some things they don't tell you

[Rastl]

Every member company of BSA has been found to have 'unauthorized software' [citation needed] but of course those aren't reported to the media like the rest.

I did asset and software management for 15 years before finally being able to dump the whole mess on someone else. Every license was tied to a purchase order and every purchase order was tied to a machine. Whenever we got a new Microsoft rep (since they were the majority of our products) I would show them the huge lateral filing cabinets with every license in order. Yeah, they're going to try to pull an audit on us.

I did get a call from the Microsoft 'legal' department once trying to tell us that we didn't have enough Exchange licenses for a company our size. When I asked which company, since we had 15 affiliates, they couldn't tell me. And when I told them that only 2 affiliates used Exchange and the rest were Lotus Notes they got truly confused. At which point I essentially told them to fuck off until they could get their facts straight. Surprisingly I never heard back.

Yes, the BSA uses disgruntled employees as their main source of information and they pay for it. They're evil and while I have no pity for companies that buy one license and install on fifty machines the BSA tactics and fine structure completely suck.

Re:Ernie Ball

[WaywardGeek]

so it's the customer's fault.

Nonsense. This is precisely the problem the article describes. Just publish in PDF. We all (customers, that is) want it in PDF. Every book reader out there can read it, and free translators exist for almost any format you want. Every other format out there for e-books is designed to keep the users from doing what we want, which is to copy it from one of my devices to another. Listen to what we customers want, and forget what you want to sell me. It's really pretty simple. I want to read it on my netbook, kindle, or smart-phone. I want my screen reader to speak it to me. Quit restricting me from using your books, and let me buy them!