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Software Piracy At the Workplace?
An anonymous reader writes "What does one do when a good portion of the application software at your workplace is pirated? Bringing this up did not endear me at all to the president of the company. I was given a flat 'We don't pirate software,' and 'We must have paid for it at some point.' Given that I was only able to find one burnt copy of Office Pro with a Google-able CD-Key, and that version of Office is on at least 20 computers, I'm not convinced. Some of the legit software in the company has been installed on more than one computer, such as Adobe Acrobat. Nevertheless I have been called on to install dubious software on multiple occasions. As for shareware, what strategies do you use to convince management to allow the purchase of commonly used utilities? If an installation of WinZip reports thousands of uses, I think the software developer deserves a bit o' coin for it. When I told management that WinZip has a timeout counter that counts off one second per file previously opened, they tried to implement a policy of wait for it, do something else, and come back later, rather than spend the money. Also, some software is free for home and educational use only, like AVG Free. What do you when management ignores this?"
Do what you're told. Look for another job.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Unfortunately ignorance of the law is no defense. The same is true for not saying anything when you witness a crime being committed. It's called obstruction. So, CYA: leave the company as soon as you can. Assume you WILL be held accountable in the future.
They have a rewards program that will pay you money for turning in your company.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I can see two honorable paths here:
You can find them FOSS substitutes for their existing software.
You can find another job.
If you want to be optimistic you can stand your ground with the managers and state: "I will not install software unless I'm certain we have a proper license for it." And see if they show you the door, or attempt to find some kind of compromise. People that take the time to look seriously at Open Office often like what they find. So there is a slim hope, but odds are, these are not the class of people you want to make a career with, and you'll be happier working somewhere that ethical compromises are not a daily expectation.
For most purposes, reasonably people look at the available data first and then infer a conclusion. When it comes to "moral" matters, though, you get a certain subset of people who work in the opposite direction.
Instead of saying "Well, I do seem to be surrounded by CD-R copies of commercial software activated with leaked VLKs, I must be a dirty pirate." they say "I'm obviously a good person, and good people don't do bad things, therefore the things that I have done could not possibly be bad."
This would be merely harmless idiocy, were it not for the fact that most of those people are completely wrong.
Security essentials is free for business, so replace AVG with that:
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
7Zip is free and OSS. Replace Winzip with that. Heck, XP has its own zip handler installed. A lot of techies assumed that XP needs a zip program because 2000 didnt have one. Get rid of it.
http://www.7-zip.org/
PDFCreator is free and OSS. It can make PDFs. Most people just need to make them, not 'edit' them.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
For utilities like winzip, replace them with open source stuff like 7zip. Explain that it's ok to be used for commercial use, and it avoids annoying licensing costs. As for the other stuff, shoot an email to your management about it and print it out. If they refuse to listen, at least you have a hard copy on record showing that you tried to warn them. Then, if anything ever happens legally you've tried to notify them and you can't get canned. If they do, they'll have a hefty wrongful termination lawsuit on their hands. If it really bothers you, find a new job and call the BSA. Tattletale. :-P
If they're dishonest in one area, well, they're dishonest, period. You'll get dicked over if you stay there. Frankly, I have no qualms about calling the BSA about places like this....
Do you have ESP?
Document everything and then turn them in. Of course the previous look for another job applies as well.
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
Instead of accsing the company of piracy (even if they're guilty), use another approach.
Say, I'm concerned that renewing future licenses will be very expensive. Say, the 1,000 copies of Winzip at $30 each is $30,000. 7-zip is a free alternative that actually works better, and will save the company $30,000 the new time those licenses need to be renewed. Alnd OpenOffice saves $400 per license over MS Office. OpenOffice comes with free PDF export functionality, which saves the $500 Acrobat license.
You may get approval to install free, legal alternatives and get rid of the pirated software. Even better, instead of being seen as the problem (the person who has a moral objection to their piracy), you'll be seen as a solution.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The ethical thing to do at this stage in the game is to drop a dime on'em. The sensible thing to do is to ensure that you still have an income afterwards. Count on the boss finding out and retaliating; whether that is illegal or not, factor that into your plans.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
In office environments like this, management's stand is very unlikely to change. Trying to change their minds will be an exercise in futility, so you need to just focus your decision making on whether or not you are willing to stick around and be a part of it, or would rather look for another job.
Shawn Asmussen
I started this post with the idea that I would make a joke similar to what RMS says about piracy requiring guns and ships but when I stopped to think about the words pirate and piracy, it really is odd that they're used when software is executed outside the limits of a license. It's totally reasonable in the face of ridiculous license terms to want to get past all that and just use the software. That's why we've gone from no product keys to product keys to activation and now to automatic auditing like Windows Genuine Advantage. With invasive tools like WGA that can scan your system and send who-knows-what back to the developer even holding your system hostage against bug and security fixes, I'm starting to feel like piracy is closer to what's happening on the developer side of the equation. Just another reason to shift to free(as in freedom) software...
Offer a solution. If you go to your boss's office and tell him he is a thief he's not going to be happy. But if you get in there and offer a free alternative it should be a good way of bringing things up.
Openoffice can do the job if everybody switch together. 7-zip is a good replacement for winzip. I'm pretty sure lot's of software has free (like in open source) alternative. Try, you'll see where it lead you. :-)
A friend of mine was uncomfortable with using the pirated s/w at her company and so switched her computer and work products
from (pirated) Office to OpenOffice, (pirated) MatLab to Octave, and VBA to python. She also brought the overall issue up with the CEO, suggesting
that the company should pay for its payware, or switch to FOSS.
Needless to say, not long afterwards, she was terminated with some lame excuse but it's clear it was for not being a "team player".
The 95% of the technology startups in our town are laughingly underfunded
(e.g. reverse mortgage on CEO's house and small contribution from Aunt Tilly's bakery), so they have no
money for legit licenses. Unfortunately, the management at many are too stupid to understand that there are perfectly good FOSS
alternatives for all of it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I am a sysadm/web developer for a smallish manufacturing business. When I got here, there licensing was a complete and utter mess. They had about half the number of Office licenses as needed (And half of those were Home/Student Edition), they had a centralized AV solution that they were still getting updates for but hadn't paid for in three years, and just overall were NOT compliant.
I brought it to the company president's attention. Buying 40 Office licenses at a time (Probably around $10000 for Small Business) as well as 70-80 AV subscriptions (Maybe another $2000), and various other server and client software (Around $12,000 more) was not something they wanted to do. They did agree to take it slow and get legit over a period of time. During that period, I did install Office on more machines but they bought the licenses over a period of 18 months. In the end, I am happy to say we are nearly 100% compliant.
So I guess instead of going to him with a HUGE bill, maybe write up a plan to go legit over the next year or two. They may balk at a one time large sum of money but be willing to pay $1000 here, $2000 there or something. Worked for me. If the company is too cheap to even do that, you probably aren't going to you as an employee and are probably better off starting to look around....
Asked and answered.
Don't think that the company president who "didn't know he was using pirated software" won't serve you up as the sacrificial lamb to the Powers That Be in a heartbeat when some disgruntled ex-employee rats to the BSA. At that point, you'll be out of a job the hard way, with the kind of black stain on a record that no young IT guy wants to have.
interface is shit
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Tell your boss that this is important, and that the company needs to pay for it, and you feel obligated to report it as you will be liable also. Then offer helpful suggestions as to who you can lay off in order to allocate money to pay for the software. Will it be friendly Bob, or the pregnant lady in the accounts department? Alternatively you can just shut your mouth and get another job like everybody else said.
Don't play their game.
Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Unless this company is boarding a ship full of software with cutlasses drawn... it isn't piracy. Calling infringement piracy makes it seem worse than it is and makes light of what is happening off the coast of Africa.
Cue the descriptivists....
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
We've been over this ground many times.
Document (as in "make sure the decision maker is aware of it") the need for an audit of software licenses. If they refuse to permit that, cover your ass as best you can and start looking for another job.
If they permit the audit, do it. If you come up short in the licenses-to-installed copies ratio, document that. If they refuse to mitigate (buy licenses or delete installations) cover your ass as best you can and look for another job.
It is your job to make the decision makers aware of the licensing terms, show them how the organization is or is not in compliance with those terms, and to educate them as to the consequences of failing to comply. If you are not allowed, at the very minimum, to do these things, rest assured that it will be you who is blamed when that willful negligence comes back to bite the organization. Cover your ass and get the documentation that shows you at least tried to get them to do the right thing.
Sorry, I don't understand you. You were trying to explain how endangering one's job to avoid engaging in unethical behavior is a cowardly thing to do?
You mean, somebody's likely to start a religion around his company?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Actually, Windows (since XP), Mac (since Tiger), and Ubuntu have .zip creation and extraction built in. WinZip is a dinosaur at this point.
The best case scenario is that you can migrate them to free software and be hailed a hero. Don't expect it though. Here are the best of the many ideas I've seen posted to slashdot on this recurring topic.
1. Consider putting a lawyer on retainer. Not as expensive as you might think and an hour or so's conversation can ensure that you document all the appropriate recommendations to keep you out of the BSA's sights and do so in a legally admissible fashion.
2. Don't make it look like a crusade so avoid being confrontational. i.e. "We need to find out who uses $software_package so we can put upgrades/support in next year's budget" or "Investigate free-for-commercial-use $kind_of_software to avoid budgeting needs entirely"
3. Document any time you bring it up with your boss. Use email or written word as much as possible. BCC an external email address and/or take backups of your exchanges home. (again, see #1 for region-specific laws)
4. Any time you are given a verbal pat on the head, do an email follow up later and if at all possible put the responsibility of license management on them. "I installed Office on the 2 new-hires' PCs. We have $quantity copies of Office installed to date. Let me know when we are getting close to our license limit as I may be able to remove the software from $clueless_user's PC."
5. List any of your little victories as fiscal savings during reviews or status reports. "Have replaced Adobe Acrobate Suite with $freeware_PDF_exporter, which will lower our licensing overhead by $250/user and allowed for widespread distribution"
6. Be prepared to be thrown under the bus. Companies willing to operate unethically are, by definition, unethical. Even if you never report them to the BSA, someone else might and you, as the IT guy, may be thrown to the wolves. Having that documentation of all the times that the CFO/CEO was stated to be in charge of license management and that you had no knowledge of the licensing limits, plus the fact they knew how many instances of software will at least ensure you get your unemployment and that the BSA won't come after you.
7. If you report them to the BSA, make sure to get the bounty and put your lawyer on notice. The BSA has a vested interest in concealing their informants, but stuff can come out and unethical people do unethical things. They often say or do things that are defamatory in the process. Whistleblower laws should ensure you can get compensation for lost wages, compensation for defamation, damage to career, etc.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
1. Take a software inventory. Figure out what is installed where, and which license codes/CD keys are being used.
2. Pull records. We get a lot of our PCs pre-loaded with MS apps and Acrobat. Those OEM installs stay with the machines, though many places try to move them forward from machine to machine (thus creating the impression that "we must have bought it sometime").
3. Check online sites, like Microsoft's eOpen site, or contact specific vendors (e.g., call Autodesk or your VAR) and ask them to send you a summary of your current licenses.
4. Document your level of usage against your level of compliance. Include all costs for becoming compliant. Be sure to include one time costs (e.g., buying additional seats) and any recurring costs (e.g., maintenance, back maintenance, reinstatement fees).
5. Educate management that software is licensed, not purchased.
6. Include information regarding the legal liability related to pirated software. Include references to any cases you can find, including actual fines, as well as potential fines (caps). Note the reputational risk to the company as well.
7. Prepare a plan for bringing the company into compliance. Include possible stop-gap measures and alternatives (e.g., limiting the number of users with a specific pieces of software, buying one additional license per year, using OpenOffice).
8. Compile everything into a well-documented report/memo (depending on your company's preferred style), and be sure to present it personally (don't just email it off). Offer to meet at another time, if necessary, but you must make it clear how important this is. Offer to meet with the entire management team. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
9. Let management know you don't plan on blowing the whistle (they'll surely say "nobody knows, so we're fine"), but make them aware that any disgruntled employee could make a call in to the piracy hotline. If you have the intestinal fortitude to do so, you could even make it clear (if it reflects your beliefs) that you value your integrity and that you cannot, in good conscience, help the company steal software/violate contract terms. Of course, that means you need to be ready to put up or shut up.
All that being well and good, you can take some practical steps to start getting things into compliance going forward:
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Most small businesses have a hard time dealing with software licensing. Any money that they have to spend on software is less money for them to spend on other things like employee salaries, power bills to keep the lights on, toner for the printers, etc. It sounds to me like the OP has already shot himself in the foot by bringing it up to management.
If pirated software really bothers you then find another job (good luck with that in this market). However ratting your employer out to the BSA is a dickhead move. Whether you like it or not, they are currently paying your salary, and the salary of at least 20 other people. The odds of them getting audited for license compliance are just about zero, unless someone rats them out.
I'd take a long hard look at the situation. There isn't an easy answer. Either you rat out your employer and impose significant costs and lost productivity on a company in a struggling economy, or you live with being a thief for a while until you can find another job. If I were in that situation, I'd just suck it up and start looking for another job. I wouldn't cry myself to sleep if Microsoft loses out on the licensing revenue for 19 copies of Office. And I certainly wouldn't torpedo a company that is providing employment to my community just so that the BSA and Microsoft can earn a couple thousand dollars.
Software engineers, designers and the guys who advertise and sell the software want to be paid! Get your free info by generating it yourself.
Why bother
A trip down memory lane:
"Selling games is strictly self-serving also. Apparently, you think its fantastic for companies to be driven by greed, but the customers should be selfless? Same old shit as the banks - capitalise the profit, socialise the loss."
(damburger 24 Oct Score: 5)
"In what you gave as an analogy, the hypothetical person STOLE food from the restaurant- the restaurant is out the food and drink the person took by not paying. In the case of infringement, someone merely takes a copy thereof- and nobody's out anything save maybe a cash transaction that might or might not have happened. They're not out their original copy, so it's not theft."
(Svartalk 24 Oct Score: 5)
"If I copy something that an artist produced, it doesn't cost that artist either time or effort. The time and effort has already been spent, they have no way of getting it back.
The only possibility is that they might get payment in compensation for it. As long as anything I do does not affect their chance of getting this compensation, I see no possible way in which it can be immoral. Therefore, as long as I can be sure that I am not going to pay for a copy, I see no way that making my own copy is immoral."
(julesh 24 Oct Score: 4)
"Yeah just like getting bit by an ant 'hurts' me, but not really. It's just an ant. Nothing to have a hissy-fit over like IRAA and the BSA seem to be having.
BSA: 'Oh noes! We've been bit an ant. The end is nigh'
US: 'Stop being a wuss.'"
(commodore64_love 12 Oct Score: 4)
I think what's going on here is most people see business purchases of commercial software as a way to justify their own piracy, like this person:
"Through college I had the full version of Matlab/Simulink. I used toolboxes that the school didn't have when doing class projects. I learned everything I could about it and the toolboxes available.
Now, 6 years later, I was able to talk my boss into buying a few extra special toolboxes for the work we do. Something close to $30k a seat a year. Had I never 'pirated' all that software I would have never been able to sell my self to my company, nor sell my company on Matlab toolboxes."
(0100010001010011 12 Oct Score: 4)
Make an attempt to switch them over to free for commercial use products as mentioned (e.g. 7-Zip, whatever free PDF software). That might get them into the mood to switch over to more FOSS or pay for licenses once it's shown to be a success. Then ask "what should we do with the remainder of the license issues" that they are more hesitant to switch from (e.g. Office) pointing out that a disgruntled employee or ex-employee could turn them in for a bounty. You want to appear that you are helping them to avoid a potentially huge fine. They will either go along with it or possibly fire you. If they fire you drop a dime and collect additional unemployment benefits.
If you need other formats, use 7-Zip. Supports almost everything and is free.
First post! (just in case I am...)
Ask for a brown paper bag full of cash in exchange for your silence.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
In other words, you like to hire ethically challenged people who are willing to break the law for your profit. Please tell us where you work so we know better than to be associated with such an ethically deprived individual.
Obviously said by someone who's never put a lot of work into a program, video, script, or anything else that requires creative work, then wondered why he wasn't making money on it.
If I build a house, I get paid by the people who use it. If I put the same effort into, say, a film script, that might take anywhere from 6 weeks to a year to write, why should people get it for free?
Interesting how the kiddies who've never had to work for a living thing they should get everything for free and don't have the backbone to produce anything worthwhile in exchange. They're the real users or AOLusers -- use and use and too impotent to produce on their own.
It sounds clear they're not going to change business practices. There's always reporting them to the BSE or some other software piracy watchdog then going through a very painful (from what I hear) audit. You've already made known pirated software bothers you and if all of a sudden a watchdog group shows at your door with a warrant or whatever they use... You're screwed as far as continuing with this company. Likely you'll be fired for some unrelated subjective cause.
You can shut-up and look the other way or you can leave and report them. You cannot force them to change, you cannot report them and stay. Do your own math...
-[d]-
Either get licensed or get a new job - seems to be the running theme here. I agree. As the license manager (and product expert) for Adobe Acrobat at my company I can honestly say that if you don't have the support of leadership to get and stay licensed you really need to get a new job. Software worth using is software worth paying for. Many software companies really would rather you became compliant rather than have to deal with litigation - no one wins. And in these economic times your negotiation power is that much greater. You can always threaten with the 'I really like your xyz product, but if terms aren't favorable I guess we will just have to go with the FOSS abc tool. Yea, we are willing to take the functional hit.' Two things - be willing to back it up. Be reasonable in your requests. Sorry - you will never get Acrobat Pro for less that $250/seat unless you are handing over at least seven figures. But by then, you are already at CLP Level 4 pricing - which is a significant discount against list - that you can leverage across ALL your Adobe products (CS, Flex, etc.) For Acrobat - Yea, it's expensive but it does a lot of things that are hard to do with FOSS* tools. You may also want to investigate just 'lower cost' alternatives - Nuance's is pretty good along the solution from ArtsPDF. With some negotiation you may be able to get Nuance's sub $10US/seat. Stay away from PDF995 and other such really low-cost tools - they aren't worth the hassle. The primary problem with them is the way they handle the conversion. Most are implemented as a GDI printer which tends to have problems with some graphics and layout accuracy. Direct to PDF is the best (e.g. Adobe CS tools), but if the underlying library is bunk that makes the PDF bunk. Second best is through PostScript, but it has it's limitations. PDF, as a filetype, is much, much more complicated than many folks realize. A lots of ways to screw it up - not so many to do it right. * Sorry if I rub some folks wrong here - but I have yet to find a FOSS implemented PDF library that is any good. The GNU library, and products based on it (OpenOffice, GhostScript, FOP, etc.) really produce poor quality PDFs in the production world. For quick, one-off work it works just fine. But when you have to take their PDF output and use it as input into another system (or even just to combine them) they tend to breakdown. Or the PDF becomes overly bloated. Yes, the Adobe library is expensive, but I know what I am getting and don't have problems with them. PDFlib is also a really good production-grade library and isn't all that expensive. Licensing terms are more than generous. More language bindings and platforms than you can shake a stick at (even native z/OS - not just USFHFS). We had some reasonable success with iText for on-the-fly generation but in a production print workflow, not all that good.
And everywhere I've worked has been 100% legit. Maybe you should stop working for criminals? Just a thought.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Not necessarily.
If it's within your purview, you can always try ordering licenses for the software in question, or submitting the purchase request through proper channels. When asked why, explain that you cannot find any licensing information, and you're looking to protect the company's interests.
That said, it's not your job to make policy, nor is it your responsibility to protect the financial interests of the publishers of the software in question.
So, keep a record of all of your meetings and document all conversations you had with any superiors regarding the situation. Obviously you don't want to include any especially damning details one way or the other -- your goal here is not retribution, it's job and career security. If you said nothing to management about a problem you knew about, then you're at fault. At the same time, you don't want to take the fall if/when someone reports your company. Keeping records will help to defend against either scenario, and improve your job prospects should you be "let go." It's evidence that you were trying to be a team player. CYA -- Cover Your Ass -- but don't rock the boat unless you're prepared for the consequences when everyone ends up in the water (including yourself).
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If I build a house, I get paid by the people who use it. If I put the same effort into, say, a film script, that might take anywhere from 6 weeks to a year to write, why should people get it for free?
If you build a house you get paid ONCE by the people who use it. Why should one effort at a film script (or software or music, etc.) grant you income for life? Maybe you should just get paid for it for 6 weeks to a year or however long it took to create. The idea that you should be paid for life (plus!) for a relatively short period of work is as ridiculous, if not more so, than people thinking they should get everything for free.
This is a dangerous position to be in, since **** rolls downhill when someone calls the BSA. First thing to do at this point is get some documentation. Email the CEO with your same concerns, maybe add in some of your research, and get his response via email, then print it out & save it! Then, when the audit happens and he points the finger at you, you can defend yourself. Otherwise, your conversation with the CEO (and his response) is irrelevant. Remember: if it isn't written down, it never happened -- the CEO could say you were installing unlicensed software without his knowledge, and then its your neck on the line.
And as far as calling an audit goes, think VERY carefully before calling the BSA in. It's going to be pretty obvious to the CEO who called the BSA, especially after you've been coming to him with these concerns. They may not know 100% for sure, but that's not going to stop them from finding some way to get rid of you. More importantly, if your CEO is networked well within your local business community, he may be able to blackball you from getting another job. Based on the information you've given, I would personally go for a paper trail where the CEO tells you NOT to fix the licensing issues, save that, and look for employment elsewhere. If you're going to call the BSA, wait until ~6 months after you're happily employed elsewhere before burning those bridges by calling an audit.
Because just because you put effort into it doesn't guarantee you can make a profit off of it, even if you intend to do so. Houses are scarce resources; information is reproducible and not scarce. It's not that you don't "deserve" compensation or that it "should" be free, it's that simply that technology is changing everything. Because I put effort into mowing my lawn, does not mean I should be able to charge people for looking at it or making copies of a photograph of it. It's ludicrous to say that you own a particular configuration of 1s and 0s, just as it would be ludicrous to say you own a particular wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum or particular frequency of sound. Same going with those ridiculous patents on genes/genetic codes.
If houses could be copied and replicated through future technology then I will say the same thing in that case as well.
Ok this is a blatant troll but I'll bite anyway. Copyright is not theft. Endless copyright may be wrong but that will change eventually. In the mean time we have laws and I still want to get paid. So whether you think so or not, copyrights and patents are there for a reason most of which involve me being able to eat and make the rent in order to continue to produce more software for you (collective not getting personal) to pirate.
Why bother
Begin looking for another job as soon as possible. Document your communications with your manager and attempts to get them to go legit. But leave as soon as possible.
The reason is simple: a company who believes it is okay to do what they're doing is not going to appreciate what YOU do. Your raises will never be good, the respect you garner from upper level management will be negligible, and you will always be treated as a second class citizen that is there only because the world requires it. The companies that do what you're describing are those who view technology as a "necessary evil" and "money sink" rather than the enabler it should be.
My reality check bounced.
Bull-shit...no one DESERVES the right to get paid. That's a moral/ethical argument that has nothing to do with reality. It may be true (I hold to it personally...probably in a lesser way than you), but that doesn't matter when reality comes into the picture. Truth is, economically speaking, the MARKET determines who DESERVES to get paid or not...not you or I. The frustrations that many have is the artificial legislation of who deserves pay. It disrupts the entire market and takes the decision-making out of the hands of those who are paying, leaving consumers bitter and angry at the fact that they can't even choose who or what to pay for (hence why people hate taxation time).
At least quit arguing from an emotional standpoint...take the time to make informed and reasonable arguments rather than dragging your moral/ethical standpoints in. I hate some of this crap too, but it doesn't have to be a part of the argument. It sounds like you may have a personal stake in this. If so, think about it from this way...Would it bother you if I demanded that your right to choose be taken away from you because I think that I deserve something? Ya, it might be a little extreme in some cases, but, the arguments that you make really do boil down to such a plea.
Wow. What a great justification of illegal activity. Sorry, but djheru is right. Threatening to report illegal activity unless it is stopped is not blackmail. Threatening to report it unless I get some money is, but blackmail involves the blackmailer benefiting.
You've basically made the argument that no one ever has the right to threaten to go to the police if the criminal activity doesn't stop. That's beyond absurd.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I sent an email to the person who should have been in charge and was greeted in much the same way. We had placed a 'free' evaluation copy of winzip in our corporate image and built it out on literally thousands of machines. after being told to 'shut-up' I covered my a$$ with a dated email and then from the public library dropped the BSA and win-zip/niko-mak BOTH an email detailing the issue. The company settled with both for a LARGE payment and cleaned the desktop image of any 'grey-ware' that was free for NON-COMMERCIAL use. Unless you are in a position to be held responsible I'd recommend just doing NOTHING, safer career wise in the long run...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
There's a reason why things are like this, and that's because no one would bother writing professional-quality software if they didn't get paid enough for it. Think all you want about how immaterial things should be free, but if all information somehow had to be free then you wouldn't have anymore professional software around, you'd be stuck with crap like GIMP or Blender and would never again see anything like Photoshop or 3DS Max. There's thousands of man-hours of work that go into each such commercial program, man-hours from highly qualified and well-paid people. Someone has to pay for that work, cause if no one does then these people won't touch that ever again and look for a real job that pays.
It's ludicrous to say that you own a particular configuration of 1s and 0s
That's the stupidest fucking argument on the topic I've ever heard. If everything comes down to just a bunch of 1s and 0s, then why don't you just create them as you need them? Oh, what's that? Creating what you want is non-trivial and the only way to create that is to do it the way it's currently done, which costs money? By the way, not believing in private property is communism. It's like, someone painstakingly creates something and then some wanker like you comes up and goes "this is now property of the people, thank you".
TL;DR you sound like a broke ass basement dweller who wants all his porn, games, movies and music for free cause has no money, and who'd never create anything worth a dime, so it's easy for you to whine and demand that everything is offered to you for free. I'm a self employed software developer and make a living off a program I created all on my own, I create value with my work, you wouldn't know what that means.
You just got troll'd!
The better (business) solution is to speak to management in terms they can understand - money.
I'm not saying that they need to feel threatened. Instead, point out that you are looking out for the interests of the company and want to ensure all bases are covered in the event of a short-notice software audit.
Then you outline a plan to audit the computers on your network and a plan for remediation (buying licenses, uninstalling software, and/or using some sort of network-wide metering package). Again, this should be done with the focus on how much this will cost the company versus not complying and getting caught with unlicensed software. Remember, management really only cares about budgets and how much of it needs to be expended. It might also help to explain that your own ass is on the line as the IT admin and that, by formally notifying management (you *are* documenting this formally, right?), they are just as culpable if/when a BSA audit occurs.
Part of a good admin's job is to audit the environment regularly for such things, anyway. Even if no action is taken on the findings, at least you know where you're starting from when action ultimately does need to be taken - for any sort of project, not just software license management.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Endless copyright may be wrong but that will change eventually
You're not very good at extrapolation, are you? I'll admit I share a very tiny sliver of your hope, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. If any kind of sane copyright laws get enacted during my lifetime, I'll be very surprised.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
You make a pretty big leap, saying that disagreeing with the current application of intellectual property laws is the same as not believing in ownership of private property.
If you make something, you deserve to charge money for it. It's a big jump to then say that your great great great grandchildren should also make money from it. An even bigger jump to say that you can transfer your rights to someone else who can then make money from it in perpetuity and an even bigger jump to say that the people who buy your product don't really own it but are only leasing it for however long you say and not a moment longer.
The notion that intellectual property rights have certain limits, especially on the length of time you can claim those rights has been part of the laws of copyright and patent for a very long time. Given the ephemeral nature of ideas, this makes sense and has been a system that works. It's only since certain people, usually not the people who actually come up with the ideas, have started trying to assert longer and longer copyright periods, limiting the rights of the purchaser and coming up with perverted notions such as "licensing" products to consumers instead of "selling" those products, that there has been a serious pushback from consumers.
Making things and buying and selling those things is a two-way transaction that has been part of the social contract for a long time. Recently, one side of that transaction has decided to assert their financial power by making the rules of the transaction less equitable. That has caused many people on the other side of the transaction to believe the whole setup is bad, which leads to widespread rulebreaking.
You can say that the people breaking the rules are criminals or communists or even terrorists, but it would be easier to swallow these assertions if those on the supply side of the transaction had acted in good faith from the beginning. Unfortunately, "taking advantage of a powerful position" has become a sacred rite in the religion of free market economics. So, you end up with a surprising number of people who lose respect for the entire transaction. Maybe it's in the nature of human societies that every so often, when a transaction becomes unbalanced, that there is a widespread breakdown in following the rules which escalates until the system can be retooled. This seems to be what's happening in the realm of "intellectual property" (and, I can argue, in the entire system we know as "capitalism").
Behaviors that should have ended with feudalism now become "good business practice". No wonder so many people now believe that all of free market economics is a scam. One thing for sure, it's unlikely the system is going to be fixed by escalating the inequity of the transaction.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You are confusing the utilitarian aspect of someone (i.e., the government) protecting original ideas versus a morally justified right to having that idea protected.
I like how you implied I don't believe in private property because I believe scarcity is the main factor in property rights--I argued that anything scarce should be considered to be property. Anything that cannot be informationally copied. That's the difference between stealing and transcribing a book.
A more easy way to look at it is the level of arbitrariness involved in protection of this "property." Intellectual property rights are entirely arbitrary--the number of years you have a right to it, what IS and ISN'T considered fair use, those are all completely arbitrary and vary from nation to nation. You cannot merely know without being told beforehand what your intellectual property "rights" are. With scarce property, such as a chair or so on, your rights are pretty intuitive and more basic.
There's a reason why things are like this, and that's because no one would bother writing professional-quality software if they didn't get paid enough for it. Think all you want about how immaterial things should be free, but if all information somehow had to be free then you wouldn't have anymore professional software around, you'd be stuck with crap like GIMP or Blender and would never again see anything like Photoshop or 3DS Max. There's thousands of man-hours of work that go into each such commercial program, man-hours from highly qualified and well-paid people. Someone has to pay for that work, cause if no one does then these people won't touch that ever again and look for a real job that pays.
Again, that is a utilitarian argument and not a moral one. Or more accurately, that is an argument out of convenience and not out of whether it's right or wrong, and you have not established why it's wrong to copy software, merely that negative consequences will result (and I do not deny that).
That's the stupidest fucking argument on the topic I've ever heard. If everything comes down to just a bunch of 1s and 0s, then why don't you just create them as you need them? Oh, what's that? Creating what you want is non-trivial and the only way to create that is to do it the way it's currently done, which costs money? By the way, not believing in private property is communism. It's like, someone painstakingly creates something and then some wanker like you comes up and goes "this is now property of the people, thank you".
I'm not saying people are owed or deserve that software for free, merely that copying software is not unethical because information is not [i]materially scarce[/i] (your usage of scarcity was an equivocation).
Saying that because thinking up or implementing a good idea grants you magical exclusive rights to it is ridiculous. It is like arguing that being the first to think of and implement a new scientific experimental paradigm grants you the exclusive right to that experimental paradigm. It's ridiculous.
I would say that you do deserve to get paid for your software, but given your hysterical yet amusing attitude I would be interested in knowing what program you made so I can torrent it :) Who knows... maybe I'll start really soon :)
As someone who has been there and done that, my advice is to start activly looking for a new job today. It's one thing if management doesn't know what's going on but it's different if they know and don't care. In my case, I mentioned in several meetings that I needed to get legal and when my next review came around they needed someone with a different skill set. My two reviews before that were above average. The point is that if they are to cheap to get legal they are also to cheap to give you raises and support you and your job in other ways. Other places where I have worked that had no pirated software policies in place also had HR policies in place for cost of living and merit raises that were fair to the employee. Just get out of that place as fast as you can and you will be glad you did.
This intrigues me. If I build a house and then sell it the new owners are free to do whatever they want to it. They can modify it, they can rent it, they can sell it (for profit), they could even destroy it. What about movie scripts (books)? It seems to me the same things are possible and even likely to happen. Why exactly is software different? Should it be different?
(Please bear in mind that I didn't read the grandpappy post, just the bit you quoted and your response.)
The FOSS movement does not equate the two concepts "a particular configuration of 1s and 0s" and "creat[ing that sequence of 1s and 0s] as you need them" as you have. The problem is in the notion of doing something cool once and then making money off of it for the rest of your life when there is zero cost to mass produce (i.e., make digital copies). This is where the FOSS movement and I part ways a bit, because FOSS says that it's "unethical" to do this. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I know if the cost of mass producing something is negligible, it's certainly impractical at the very least.
From the standpoint of a healthy capitalist society, I regard software more as a service (and don't confused SaaS here, I'm talking about box software like Windows) than a product. Capitalism is supposed to reward people for doing useful work. Patents and copyrights were originally conceived to do this, but over time they've become more and more about allowing one to rest on one's laurels and live a life of luxury for having done that one cool thing. I'm not exactly sure where this expectation of entitlement comes from...what other line of work doesn't require you to show up everyday to get a paycheck?
The "service" part of software comes in the form of extension and support. If I make something cool and release it for free, I may be paid to support it (ongoing labor), or even extend it (short-term labor at a particular customer's behest). Even in the case of being paid to do an extension I otherwise would not have done, I as the developer and strongly incented to release it for free to all because it presumably makes my original software more valuable and will drive further business.
Not coincidentally, this is actually how most commercial software companies actually work. I used to work for a well-known company that made marketing software, and they would routinely cut their prices 50%, even up to 90% to make a big sale. That sounds crazy until you understand the logic of it, which was to lock up the far more valuable support contract. In other words, what the market was saying is that the software itself wasn't valuable to customers—the support and ability to get feature requests answered, on the other hand, was. And so the pricing structure reflected that...give (or nearly give) the software away, and charge the real bucks for what the buyer is actually willing to pay for.
This happened on nearly every deal at that company, and it led me to wonder why they even bothered with charging at all...why not just give it away for free download on the website? Sure, a lot of small fish that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it would start using it without ever paying a dime into the system...but so what? We weren't going to make money off of them anyway, and by removing the barrier to entry we open the door to at least small or one-time support fees, get better feedback for laying out our roadmap, and potentially deprive a competitor of a sale, increasing our own marketshare.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
there are other considerations for society as explicitly discussed in the case law and other sources. however, i'm not necessarily even that put out by lifetime copyright, even though the original term of copyright was 10 years (and authors could lose copyright protection before their books were even well known due to the means of travel and communication of the time (horse and sailing ship)).
The problem with infinite copyright is that it stifles innovation the same as no copyright does. People are restrained by copyright from riffing off prior work. This can have negative societal consequences as political, social, and philosophical works frequently need to reference the current art. It's very onerous to tell people to buy 100 books because they're all still under copyright when excerpts would be more appropriate.
In addition, my biggest beef is the continual extension of copyright beyond the lifetime of the author solely to preserve Disney's profits because they're too lazy to invent new content or use trademark protection for mickey's damned ears.
Walt Disney's dead. Unless he's a follower of ancient Egyptian religion, he can't take it with him. His kids need to figure out how to make money themselves.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Wrong. Please read up on economics. His point is quite valid. No one "deserves" to get paid. The only reason you get paid is because the other party sees that as the only viable way to get what they want. (example: they could steal it from you. but then there might be repercussions when your village raids their village. so they buy it. or maybe you're not part of a village. so they steal it and kill you. except they can't get the goods from anyone else, so they pay you to continue producing what they want.) You say that your argument is logical. I put it to you that you don't know what logic is. It is a formalized way of expressing things that follows very strict rules. For instance, given that A > B and A B. That is logic. "creating a product" does not imply "you deserve payment". It has only taken on this meaning due to our culture and a type of cost-benefit analysis whereby we decided that civilization was better than anarchy.
Well, the "service" business model doesn't work for everything, for example it wouldn't work with my program for which no support is needed. And as for the "sitting back and getting money for the rest of your life" argument, well so what, it's not the only case where that happens. People get lots of money from doing much less. Are you actually asking for how long are you entitled to receive money from the work you did after you stopped doing anything to it? Sounds like what you're pondering to me! Is it fair to reap the fruits from something you did 20 years ago? What's fair?
The elephant in the room here is that you all want to copy those immaterial works for free, and because of this you come up with bullshit moral justifications to get as much as you can for free. I pirate everything too, but I'm not an hypocrite, I don't try to disguise my not wanting to pay for things I can have for free as a moral war against injustice. You might think it conflicts with me selling software, but to me it doesn't, because there's no morals involved anywhere on either side of the equation. I pirate anything I want cause I need it/want it and I don't have the money for it and even if I did I'd rather not pay for what I can have for free, and on the other hand I need to make money, selling software is one way, and if my sales went down too low for a reason or another I'd look for job (which I'm actually in the process of doing, software sales are too irregular and make me just enough for a very modest living).
You just got troll'd!
Technlogy is NOT "changing everything." Not many peope can write software, compelling stories, make good movies, video games, etc. As long as THAT doesn't change (and I don't see it changing anytime soon), copyright is just as valid today as it was 200 years ago.
Someone is providing a benefit, which, while not physical property, does mean they deserve to be paid.
Unless you don't want USEFUL software.
"Endless copyright may be wrong but that will change eventually."
I beg to differ. History as well as current trends show that copyright law is getting more and more restrictive, less and less fair, and will continue to do so, UNLESS the people stand up and say, "Enough is ENOUGH!"
That ACTA treaty that is secretly being worked out scares me. The "IP Holders" seem to have all the say on it. As an international treaty, it will trump national law once a nation signs on to it. It seems that "3 strikes and you're out" will be an integral part of the treaty. But, NO ONE KNOWS anything for sure, because the *IAA's of the world are in, and the public is out of any discussion.
Copyright law could conceivably be as bad as anything Orwelle envisioned. It could even require police ware on your computer, which will report anything you do. Insane.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But that's just it: they don't have to buy it. And apparently there's a large segment of society that does not feel such an impulse to respect intellectual property laws. That's the point of my argument here.
The only time we've seen such a large portion of society openly willing to break a law has been prohibition against alcohol and marijuana. And one of those laws fell and the other is weakened every day.
That's why it's important to look at the reasons behind the public's unwillingness to respect intellectual property laws. There's more at work here than just the fact that suddenly otherwise law-abiding citizens have decided to become criminals. And those on the supply-side of content creation and patents (including me) better think about this situation very carefully because simply escalating penalties to scare people, setting up snitch 800 numbers and suing the pants off college kids and old ladies is not going to get the job done.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just know what you're getting into first and make sure you're ready for that. Getting calls from lawyers from your previous job on your current job usually doesn't earn you cool points with bosses no matter how right you were...
That's just a matter of accounting. The writers could just charge more up-front and end up with the same amount earned at the end of the road.
No, it's more than that. Charging up front means you decide on a value for your time, and once you collect that amount, the transaction is complete.
Charging per copy means the value of your time is unknown. You could sell one copy, or you could sell a million; you did the same amount of work either way, but the amount you get paid can vary wildly. And since there's no upper bound on the (retroactive) value of your time, you'll never be satisfied with any amount.
Think about it. When was the last time a well-known artist or author said "hey, I've made enough money on this work already, I'm going to release it into the public domain"?
The issue is not with how long they're paid, it's with how much they're paid.
The issue is with how they're paid, and how that payment scheme impacts the rest of us.
If writers collected payment up front, and moved on once they'd done their work and gotten paid as agreed, there'd be no need for infringement lawsuits, no royalties or licensing restrictions. That would open the door to free production of derivative works and allow many more people to enjoy the completed work.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
There's room for many models. It is the entertainment industry that is trying to force the economics of content into the same model as used for physical goods such as chairs.
Actually, they don't stop there, they want it both ways. Treated as information when it impacts their bottom line, treated like physical property when it's your bottom line. They sell downloads, however grudgingly, reaping huge savings in distribution costs from doing all the copying and delivery electronically. Then they try to insist their customers not do what they do by threatening legal action if people don't treat downloads as if they were physical objects, pushing idiotic DRM schemes, making insultingly ludicrous analogies, and when all else fails making disgusting appeals to our sympathies with the "starving artists" and "support capitalism" baloney. Those are like listening to Madoff give a speech on the virtues of honesty and financial probity.
I really do think copyright has to go. If we as a society want to encourage art beyond what can already be done with the incredible advances in technology, there are other ways than hogtying ourselves with these antiquated, nonsensical laws. What I mean is that before the 20th century, we lacked the means to record performers. Copyright was useless to them. They had to earn all their income from live performances. And those were to audiences of a few hundreds at most, with only clever amphitheater design to make them audible to their listeners. Performing to a different 1000 every weekday for 10 years would get a 19th century performer heard by fewer than 3 million people. Today, not only can we record performances, we can do all kinds of studio work to make recordings better than live could ever be. And we can broadcast performances all over the world, and amplify sound so tens of thousands of people can enjoy a single live concert. Yet the industry hinders the engineering wizards who made that and them possible, endlessly fighting every technological advance. Take away this weapon called "copyright" that they've been gouging and smashing lives with, and set down a few more ground rules to stop their abuse of musicians.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"