Crying Foul At the BSA's "Nauseating" Anti-Piracy Tactics

Barence writes "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been accused of heavy-handed tactics that could drive small companies to incriminate themselves. The Microsoft-backed piracy watchdog generates a quarter of its cases by offering employees cash rewards for informing on their own employer. 'It is basically harvesting allegations from disgruntled employees and farming them out to expensive law firms,' one small business owner told PC Pro, who said he was 'nauseated' by the tactics. The BSA then sends out a letter demanding the business owner fill out a software audit, or potentially face court action — even though the BSA has no power to demand such an audit and hasn't pursued a court case in five years. 'It's designed to scare the recipient into thinking that they're obliged to provide certain information when, in fact, it's difficult to see that they are,' said a leading IT lawyer."

Comments

Re:Use Linux

[MightyMartian]

No response at all is dangerous. A better response is "We are not in violation of any licenses. Please direct all further correspondence to our attorney. Find his contact information attached."

I have a feeling in most cases it will end there.

We refer you to the reply given in the case of

[ChipMonk]

Arkell v. Pressdram:

"We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off."

BSA is a total fuck up, period

[Taco Cowboy]

Ever since its inception, BSA is nothing but crap

Back in the 1990's, they have sent me threatening emails and letters - without even haven't proven that I have pirated anything

Back then I attended some CAD/CAM seminars offered by Audodesk - and in those events they handed out forms in which we filled in our names, company names, email address, snailmail address and so on

Before I attended those seminars, I got no threatening email nor letters filled with legalese jargons, threatening to take me to court for "using unauthorized software"

I mean, it's a total fuck

I attended those seminars to learn more about CAD/CAM, it does not mean I own any CAD/CAM software, but of course, BSA doesn't care

They just took the name list from the seminar organizers and mass-mailing the threatening letters

After those encounters, I stopped attending any Autocad seminar and in a few years, those threatening letters also stopped coming

BSA's way of handling their customers, even potential customers, is totally ridiculous