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How IT Pros Can Avoid Legal Trouble
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter S. Vogel reports on the kinds of inadvertent transgressions that could land IT pros into legal trouble without realizing it. From confidentiality and privacy negligence, to copyright and source code violations, IT staff are legally liable for a lot more than they might think — in some cases because the law will not stop at your employer, instead holding individual IT employees responsible for violations even if the individuals are just 'doing their job.' Worse, as the recent case against Terry Childs has shown, judges and juries are often not technically savvy enough to understand what IT pros do. 'That lack of understanding can lead them to conclude you're at fault or should have known better,' Vogel writes. 'After all, many people think anyone technical is a whiz kid or brainiac on any topic.'"
What legally questionable scenarios have cropped up at your job?
I can't tell you how many shops I've worked at where it was obvious that all the software was cracked. My favorite was a print vendor who would encourage his staff (college interns) to "bring in" some of their school software/plugins to "test in a real-world environment". Anytime someone had to send a job to print, all the workstations would have to be disconnected from the network or else there would be licensing conflicts with all the cracked warez. This was more than a decade ago, and the vendor in question has been out of business for a long time. Scumbag-- everything he did somehow reeked of illegality.
I remember I came in once (this was right after I started) only to find the entire staff (except the interns) had quit without warning. Everyone from the production managers to the secretaries-- gone. I soon followed, natch!