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

Ernie Ball

[symbolset]

Let's not forget the Ernie Ball story.

Re:Ernie Ball

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically they won't even fine you, unless what you're doing is particularly egregious or blatant. Normally they're perfectly happy if you just purchase the licenses to cover the gap between what you have licensed and what you are using.

Less sympathy for companies

[east coast]

Let's be honest here. If the RIAA was sueing a company for using music in an unauthorized fashion at their place of business most people would shrug. When you're using a product to make money you normally get much less sympathy than if you were using it for private use. And even when a company follows the rules the public still doesn't normally feel too bad about them getting the screws.

And, AFAIK, the BSA isn't busting kids downloading Grand Theft Auto.

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

[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.

Who they sue

[fyoder]

I think it's a lot simpler than that. Because the BSA attacks businesses, not disabled single mothers, children, and the dead, fewer people even know about them. They haven't gone as far across the line into cartoon super villainy.

Re:Who they sue

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Because the BSA attacks businesses, not disabled single mothers, children, and the dead, fewer people even know about them.

Also, while their behaviour has not been perfect, as far as I know the BSA has never systematically and deliberately gone after parties who are probably innocent. While they have been known to try to pull audits and such under somewhat dubious circumstances, it's usually at least responding to a tip-off.

Big Music and Big Movies, on the other hand, have frequently and systematically attacked legitimate consumers, and run campaigns of intimidation based on at best dubious legal claims and misleading advertising.

This is the same BSA

[canajin56]

whose EULA's allow them to conduct raids and search+seizure, and hand out $100,000 fines for having one workstation that has XP installed, but they can't find the License that came in the box (The CD sleeve with the key is NOT proof of license, and you WILL get a fine if you only have that!) My OEM copy of Vista that came with my laptop doesn't seem to have the hologram encrusted license that my boxed copy of 2000 came with, so I imagine I'm automatically guilty if they ever send in the SWAT team for a surprise inspection.

Huh?

[ausoleil]

"First, BSA's members have always offered their products for sale to the public, through any channel that wants to sell them"

Try to buy an obsoleted version of a program to run on an old platform. Got an old IBM-XT? Where are you going to purchase a legit copy of Lotus 1-2-3 not to mention DOS? But you *can* be sued for pirating them, at least technically.

"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."

Did someone at Microsoft write this?

"Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws."

See the first reply, but "easily" is in the eye of the beholder. A typical recent college grad who wants to freelance graphics design work might say "easily"purchasing Adobe's Creative Suite is all but impossible for their finances. Yes, I know there are FOSS alternatives, but the truth is that the ad/graphics/printing world runs on Adobe. For example.

None of that makes stealing software or music content right, but the rationale for BSA being less unpopular is not the reasons cited above. It may be far more simple: BSA doesn't typically sue consumers, it seems that they typically go after businesses.

Re:Don't bite the hand that feeds you

[Sj0]

Why should I trust you? You're not even buffer safe.

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.