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Recession Turning Software Auditors Into Greedy Traffic Cops
judgecorp writes "As the recession bites, software auditors are cracking down, and some are simply exploiting loopholes and technicalities to meet their targets, according to analyst Forrester. They may be within their rights, but they aren't endearing themselves to users; Steve Ballmer faced weary customers in London last year, and admitted Windows licenses have deliberate 'gotchas.'"
(1) Outsource your work to a very large country which dosen't care about IP laws.
(2) Profit!
(1a) Outsource your work to domestic individuals who have the compatible software regardless of license legitimacy.
(2a) Don't shake their hands when you make a deal. Pay'em through some guy meeting them at an Italian restaurant every week. Stop showing up when they fail to deliver.
(3a) Wanna keep your house? 1a and 2a for you unemployed Americans whose baby food money is going towards military ammunition.
Don't run Windows. "Software auditors" are just about unknown to users of any other platform.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They may be within their rights, but they aren't endearing themselves to users; They are not looking for endearment, they are looking for a paycheck.
Home of The Suki Series
If "traffic cop" implied "greedy", then there wouldn't be any need for the adjective.
Maybe, but then they're limited by what the court has stated they can do. If you voluntarily allow them access then the sky is the limit.
IMO this is one place where strong management can make a big difference by taking an explicit position on "Times are tough, we need to collect what revenue we can" vs "We need to preserve a relationship with our customers *and* help them stay in business *and* get ready to capitalise on that good relationship when the economy picks up and we want to sell more stuff". Targets should not be allowed to distract from the bigger picture, which is *serving your customers*. Sure you might have contract terms that give you "the right" to hit your customers with surprise charges in order to help keep your own business afloat but you're not really serving them, you're using them. By the same token, when I go to my local shop they have "the right" to be rude to me - I'm paying for goods, not manners. But then I'd switch purchasing to the other local shop. Everything has a cost.
But what do I know, I'm not a manager! Times are tough, people have to get by somehow.
IIRCC some EULAs give the "authorized representatives" the authority to check your computers.
Good argument for GPL'd software.
They settled out of court for $2 million (USD) but immediately dropped Adobe from the suite in favor of free software.
Kudos to Adobe for screwing themselves so bad.
I'd hardly call getting a $2,000,000 check "screwing themselves". Especially since, if they hadn't -- as you say -- "screwed themselves" like that, they would have gotten nothing.
Who can screw their customers and expect them to come back for more.
And now they'll get nothing else, when the company could have been a good customer, along with bad publicity. I won't every buy anything from Adobe now.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
So they lost $20,000 present day value for $2,000,000 present day. Sounds like a good deal for Adobe.
So they lost $20,000 present day value for $2,000,000 present day. Sounds like a good deal for Adobe.
Sure, until today's 200 employee shop turns into tomorrow's Google and the CEO decides that since he isn't going to buy Adobe but still needs the equivalent of their software, they're going to develop an equivalent, open source it and put Adobe out of business.
It's never a good idea to piss off your customers.
Thank you. I am forever amazed at those who expect a company to "play fair" or "do the right thing". May as well expect a hungry shark not to eat that cute puppy who fell off the dock. Having litigated against some big companies, the OP has the right attitude.
Yep. You have a right to sue when you have no chance of winning. It just isn't a very profitable right to exercise.
Then they just come back an hour with a motion of discovery, the constable, and 3 deputies.
And the problem is what, exactly? That's exactly what they SHOULD have to do.
The reason the BSA shows up unannounced is because they're fishing, and hoping to get enough to THEN either threaten you or take you to court. There is no possible good to come, and nothing that will work in your favor, by granting them access.
They've already decided that it's not worth the cost of filing a suit, and in order to get anywhere, they need to have evidence, which they may not have in sufficient quantity. A pissed off sysadmin with a bone to pick is about as credible as a fox in a chicken coop.
The company that says "go fish, assholes" MIGHT see them again with a court order in hand, but it's not likely. The company that says "uuuuuh....okay, come on in" finds themselves in a few weeks threatened with a huge lawsuit, or a "settlement" calculated to be just below what the company could possibly afford...
Please help metamoderate.
Duh. That would be the point, wouldn't it?
Pissing off "one customer", when you have millions, and when you can get money from that one customer with little or no blowback? Seems like a winning scenario to me.
Except its stories like this that keep me from using any adobe products and then recommending alternatives for any clients/friends/family when I can. While I alone have only cost them a few tens of thousand dollars in lost revenue I know there are thousands of others doing the same. So while it might be a winning scenario in that one instance it wont be in the long run.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
Am not a big fan of the software auditors...but having been fired from a company in the past who had been caught the previous year with $250,000 US of unlicensed software in a medical billing company...was told in a meeting about this about two weeks before they let me go. Working in the IT department at the company & being escorted out of the building during a merger that had just started...I contacted BSA as soon as I got home. Told them the exact machines/software the employees were using from hacked copies.
Three weeks later at the job I got two days after being let go from this company (made more money & worked for better quality people)...heard my boss & several co-workers had been fired from the company & fined for their use of pirated software. The merger went through...only without these people who thought they would be there after it did.
The moral of this story...if you're going to screw people over & think you'll get away with it...the tables can turn. As my grandmother used to tell me...you may not get your just reward in this life...but eternity is a long time & it will happen there.
Would I do it again...in a heartbeat!!! Revenge is never a great motive...but it is sure sweet when it happens from those who deserve it. For some reason these type of people can't keep from digging their own holes.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
Yes,but the counter-charges are criminal and civil: assault with a deadly weapon, breaking and entering, hacking laws, etc.
Consider that these are private citizens. They have as much right to break down my door with guns and break into my machines without permission as I do to arm myself like Neo, walk into Microsoft, and attempt the same thing.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
BSA are not law enforcement. They just behave like it sometimes.
"Ballmer also suggested that education should be given government stimulus funding to enable young people to gain experience on the computing systems they would meet in the real world."
Seriously Mr B, go fuck yourself. You don't need the money and young people, on the whole, are pretty good at working things out for themselves as they have a "click and see what happens" approach mixed with the ability to ask another kid who knows. Doesn't matter if it's OpenOffice, Office 2007, whatever, if they really want it to do something, they'll find a way. The weak point is quite often the teachers.
Seriously, in the UK you cannot be a teacher without a University degree. A University degree should teach you to analyse a problem, research the problem and apply a solution. In software, this boils down to "I can't do X in program Y", go to Google and type "how do I do X in program Y", click links until you find answer and follow instructions on page. Most of the time they seem incapable of following this simple idea. They'll even come in and as me then watch me hit Google and search for a solution (often the first result returned) but it never dawns on them to do the same themselves next time (and no, support isn't my job). I showed a year 7 how to find something out using the "F1" key and he was amazed, he just didn't know.
The best thing for education, would be for kids to be trained to work stuff out for themselves by teachers who are trained to work stuff out for themselves. This "teaching people to use the software they'll use in the real world" argument is crippling and the seeming inability for people with far higher qualifications than mine to work out even minor problems has seriously dented my faith in the higher education system.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
No, you don't understand HIPAA law.
The first two links you point to are for GOVERNMENTAL entities that allow the sharing of data. And those are for a JUSTIFIABLE BUSINESS NEED. Any of those disclosures are still protected. That is the data that is disclosed still cannot be released to another entity unless it meets the same need requirements for sharing.
The BSA or any of their related entities are not even close to a GOVERNMENTAL agency that would have the authority or even a justifiable business need to access a computer with PHI on it. If I had a court order to allow the search, I'd still only do it under duress and with proper auditing of the audit software to ensure it does what it says it does and not capture data. And even then, I'd only allow a hardcopy report to leave. Or I'll do a manual audit and I'd be doing the clicks and typing and the BSA person can watch and we'd have our corporate attorney present watching both of us.
And even when data is shared, it's only the minimum allowable to be shared. So if there was a share for marketing, the selection of the data would run in one database, the extract would only be names and addresses for the mailings and those would be stored in a unlinked seperate file for the mailing program to produce the output. That's a far cry from allowing the BSA complete access to the computer with the HIPAA data on it.
The laws of the State trump the licence conditions. They can pretend to have these powers but they don't have anything unless a Judge or similar grants it.
So if, for example, I were to order a Dell, and as one of the options I select for them to pre-install Office 2007, it's my fault if the copy they install is improperly licensed?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-