Ask Slashdot: Dealing With the Business Software Alliance?

Kagetsuki writes "We've just gotten a letter from an attorney representing the Business Software Alliance stating someone (we're certain it's a disgruntled former employee) submitted information we are using illegally copied software. The thing is... we're not using illegally copied software. We have licenses for all the commercial software we are using. Still, according to articles on the BSA, that's irrelevant and they'll end up suing us anyway. So we now need a lawyer to deal with their claims and we don't have the money — this will surely be the end of the company into which I've sunk all my savings and three years of my life. Has anybody dealt with the Business Software Alliance before? What action should I take? Is there any sort of financial recourse, or at least a way cover our legal fees?"

Comments

Get legal representation

[mysidia]

Don't agree to any BSA demands or requests. Find a lawyer experienced with dealing with the BSA.

If you agree to an audit, it's highly probable they will find something illegal, regardless of whether you did anything illegal or not. You need a proof of purchase for every copy of an installed software product. If you use a Windows environment, you need proof that you had sufficient CALs for everything, on effective audit date.

If anything's not in order, or you can't find one proof of purchase for 1 license of XXX, the BSA will insist the software is pirated (even if you bought it good and legal), tack on huge fines, etc

"We've just gotten a letter from an attorney representing the Business Software Alliance stating someone (we're certain it's a disgruntled former employee)"

Be prepared to sue that former employee, for all damages and costs your business incurred as a result of their allegation, If they made a frivolous/false claim that hurt your business, and you can show who it is, take them to court. Maybe they (and others) will think twice, before making false reports to the BSA racket people.

The BSA needs their evidence to sue you, make sure you force the BSA to divulge the identity of the person reporting. Again, you will need legal counsel to help you with this

Usual "asking legal advice on Slashdot" post

[Dogtanian]

Posting near the top to state the bleeding obvious- 99% of Slashdotters are IANALs and many will offer advice that sounds sensible to them, but may turn out to be woefully misguided and possibly have unintended consequences and land you in hot water (e.g. advice like this). This is because the legal system does not always actually work like geeks think it does (regardless of whether it *should* work that way).

Bottom line- unless the person is a lawyer, or has actual experience of having gone through this (and the consequences that ensued), you should not be taking their advice. And as I said in the post linked above, the problem is sorting out the ones who *actually* know what they're talking about from the armchair lawyers arrogant enough to think that they do.

Re:Usual "asking legal advice on Slashdot" post

[LrdDimwit]

This is not quite true. The system does have lots of serious problems. But many of the arcane crazy rules you're complaining about serve essentially the same function as security patches: closing a loophole that any jackass can use to totally screw over people who actually try to use the system as intended. The thing with the law is that every part of it it is roughly analogous to the most hostile kind of IT security environment: a public internet facing server. Absolutely anyone who wants to can, will, and often already has messed with it to see what they can pull.

Remember the 54 Million Dollar Pants lawsuit? The "logic" behind that absurd amount: He claimed the 'Satisaction Guaranteed' sign meant they had to give him literally anything he wanted. Failing to do so was a violation of the Consumer Protection and Procedures Act at $1K per violation. And since the law was nebulous about how a "violation" extends over time, he claimed that each day was a new violation. (There were other tricks involved.) That works out to millions of dollars because the store didn't live up to its "promise" to guarantee satisfaction no matter what.

Similarly, there are all kinds of arcane legal restrictions on when you're allowed to make various types of arguments. If you have even a 100% valid claim ... but you don't assert it at the proper time? Too bad, you waived your right to assert it. This seems really unfair at first. But it is designed to prevent a specific type of gamesmanship, that would otherwise be trivially easy: Stalling.

Consider how many different ways there are to express even a very simple idea: the number 4. 4, 2+2, 2*2, the square root of 16, the list continues. To infinity; there are an unlimited number of ways to say "four". Many of which are complicated to parse out and determine that, in fact, it means four.

If you were allowed to revise your assertions into a law case at any time, you could stall any case, at any time, indefinitely by playing the same game, except with words. Each time you revise your filing, the judge and the other side have to review it, which necessarily introduces a delay. By doing this continually, you bury your opponent in paperwork so long as you can pay your lawyers.

This would turn any lawsuit into death by attrition: whoever has more money spends their opponent into the ground with stalling tactics. No one thinks the rules should permit this, and so the law has introduced mechanisms to prevent this sort of gamesmanship.

Which is an interesting point: One of the big criticisms of our legal system is how unbalanced it is, and how being on the less-well-funded side of a lawsuit is a terrible disadvantage. And that's with rules in place designed to thwart it. Imagine how well the system would work without these safeguards.

Most of the seemingly-illogical arcane details of the law are this sort of safeguard. The problem is, people who don't know the law are helpless. They've never heard of these rules, and even if they try to look it up, they won't navigate them as well as someone who knows what they're doing.

This is why you need to talk to a lawyer whenever you have any non-trivial interaction with the legal system. At all. Non-lawyers don't know how the system works, any more than non-programmers can debug a kernel panic.

Re:Same Thing Happened To Us

[ragarwal]

Send and *affidavit* AND quoted *license numbers* to the BSA upon a request.
I am not wearing a tin-foil hat, but, you sir, you seem like someone who works for the BSA.

This sort of a letter will be the single most damaging piece of evidence against the victim in the court.