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US Navy Denies Pirating Software on 550K Computers, Says It Had Bought Licenses For 38 Machines (arstechnica.com)
Earlier this year, the U.S. Navy was accused of pirating 3D software after testing a software package offered by Germany company Bitmanagement Software GmbH. The company had sued the United States of America for nearly $600 million. The U.S. Navy has now responded to the accusations, saying that though it did install the aforementioned software on "hundreds of thousands of computers within its network" without paying the German software maker for it, it did so with the consent of the software producer. Many might disagree, however. From a report on ArsTechnica: The Navy says that it could use the software on hundreds of thousands of computers with licenses for 38 machines. The Navy denied that a procurement official "acknowledged that additional licenses were necessary for it to distribute BS Contact Geo to its users." The government admitted that it had purchased 38 licenses, but "denies that the software licenses were 'limited,' as alleged by Plaintiff."
"The Navy denied that a procurement official "acknowledged that additional licenses were necessary for it to distribute BS Contact Geo to its users." The government admitted that it had purchased 38 licenses, but "denies that the software licenses were 'limited,' as alleged by Plaintiff.""
Then why did they buy more than one?
Surely that covers all 550k of our computers.... right?
Copying the software to those machines might be a technical violation of the license, but was there any evidence that those unlicensed copies were ever actually used?
Otherwise, this is more of a theoretical violation as opposed to showing that the Navy was using software that it just didn't want to pay for.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Language about licenses should be clearly listed in any contract but if the Navy has actually decided to fight this it sounds like Bitmanagement Software may have failed to include proper language about distributing it internally. Either the Navy is hoping to force a settlement or Bitmanagement's contracts department is getting fired.
Don't sue parties armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
NMCI was supposed to prevent all that. Is it gone now or still not working?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"Defendant is without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the remaining allegations and on that basis denies the same. "
They appear to be saying that the s/w company never indicated that they needed more licenses, modified the s/w to work in this situation, and had received e-mails saying they had successfully installed on over 100k machines. Not the company is surprised that it is running on so many machines.
But they also say that they negotiated with the company for significant volume discounts. Why would they do this if they had no clue that they needed to?
The e-mail trail should be interesting on this.
Never underestimate the negotiating potential of a fully armed aircraft carrier. Or more than one.
SeqBox
Given that the copy protection / license management was disabled by the vendor and 38 copies were purchased, I have to wonder if the Navy purchased a 38 user concurrent license vs a per machine license or believed they had done so. If so, the software is responsible for communicating with a license manager to ensure that a maximum of 38 machines can use the software at a given time.
Part of the user discussion on the article is about whether the licenses are for concurrent users or installations.
Now the software uses a central Flexnet licensing server and that supports a license pool and concurrent users. It depends on the terms of the license, but if the Flexnet allows an instance to start, then by my definition, that instance is licensed.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Does that mean that they are kidnapping, raping, robbing, and murdering on the high seas? If not, please use a more appropriate term, such as copyright infringement.
You are framing the argument from the perspective of the MPAA/RIAA/BSA. That is not honest journalism.
It's a bit of an extreme example but plenty of companies sell network based licenses. So you can install on an infinite number of machines, but can only be running simultaneously on 38 machines at once.
This kind of mistake can easily be made when deploying a Standardised Operating Environment.
I bet they only have 38 people who used this software at any one time and this is just a misunderstanding about seat and machine licenses...
I don't even understand why the government buys software. With sovereign immunity copyright law doesn't apply to them. Just pirate it and be done with it.
Which license did the software in question use?
The US Navy are pirates? Can't wait for the new whites and blues to be issues with eye patches...
If the navy only uses it while on the high seas, what copyright rules apply?
I'm no expert, but if the representative on the phone promises something that makes it an oral contract, and could potentially supersede the written contract and especially any EULA. For example, if they specifically asked whether the contract meant 38 concurrent users vs 38 installs and they were told it was concurrent users. Of course, proving it in court is a different story.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Was this a GSA listed item or a negotiated purchase or did someone just use a government credit card? There should be a mountain of paper work behind these purchases if the dollar value is over a certain amount. What do the thousands of DOD contracting bureaucrats and lawyers do all day?
The words you say to each other at the time of exchanging money for goods/services are your contract. The EULA is a bunch of words that the author really hopes you'll read and listen to.
Compared to those, what weight do words printed on the packaging have, such as "By purchasing this product, you agree that its use is subject to terms at (some URI)"?
Navy. Piracy. This shit writes itself!
Too bad the new slashdot owners ran off the non-SJWs. The collective IQ dropped 30 points around here.
Honestly, they should have contracted the work to a company that would make the program they needed based on something free like blender and then bought 3d/texture asset data. When you pay for a license, you are at the mercy of the copyright holder, even if you are the Navy.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
is that they installed and didn't give a shit about copyright or the license.
Back when this story first broke I did see a strange folder named bitmanagement on my Navy computer. Today I see that the folder has been removed.
Seriously??? Yes, they installed it on 500,00 computers FOR NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL. Makes perfect sense. Go to all the effort of rolling it out everywhere because nobody wants to use it.
See, this guy gets it.
Welcome to the Navy.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
when some random person copies software, music, or video, then the U.S. gov pretends the country is going broke because of it and tries to extradite the person.
When a few dozen cell phone batteries start smoking, make sure the company loses billions in the lucrative market they're in. A little bit of extra smoke from the exhaust of a diesel car? Make sure to sue them for $19 billion. Is someone letting the world know about the U.S. indiscrimnate killings in the Middle East, spying on the whole world, attacking electronic infrastructure, then try to get them extradited and senteced to life in prison.
But... getting caught pirating software to the tune of $600 million? Try to worm yourself out of it any way you can. The world needs to wake up to how unfair the U.S. plays its games, and give them the same treatment.
If you look at the demo video on their website - http://www.bitmanagement.com/en/demos/geo - it appears to be a browser-based plugin; the actual "demo" link tries to download a file called "BS_Contact_VRML-3DX.exe from www.bitmanagement.com. The demo shows a user-controlled fly-over of an urban area, and seems highly applicable to a lot of military uses. (the software to *create* the model seems to be different - the software named in the suit is the viewer for the 3D models)
It's quite possible that the 500K number refers to the number of machines which downloaded and installed the plugin. It's also possible that the Navy "disabled tracking of installations" (as the FA states) by putting a copy on their own server, and that the vendor was tracking installations by looking at their web server logs.
That's all speculation. It's definitely a job for a lawyer at this point, and it also points out the risks of per-user licenses when you might not have control over the number of users.
You haven't been following court rulings very well.
There was a case of Microsoft vs a company where they had an enterprise license, meaning to OS is not locked to a machine. They had under the number of licenses in use on active computers, but they had some computers that were scheduled for wiping and hadn't been wiped yet putting them over the legal number of "active" licenses.
The judge ruled in Microsoft's favor as lawfully she had to, but as part of the judgement stated that morally Microsoft was in the wrong.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Oracle tried to do this when I was ATT Wireless, we had a site license for oracle. When we ran a contact address book with multiple users, oracle tried to make us pay per server, then tried pay per user for millions of users. Oracle kept calling me in operations to try to get me to pay, I passed it onto legal and they smacked the shit outta them.
We had a great deal, 5 or so million a year for an unlimited license, and you can believe me, everywhere a database was needed, we ran mostly oracle.
(This was 10+ years ago, so Who knows now)
The summary is terrible. There are these things called site licenses. TFA indicates the developer claims the software was only licensed for 38 devices.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
You know sex is only dirty when the other guy does it. By what magical use of logic does a license for 38 machines equal a license for an unlimited number of machines? Now what would happen to you or me if we purchased 38 copies of Windows 10 and decided to send out 10,000 copies? This is why it is time to admit that the absurd notion that we are all equal before the law is identified as 100% bullshit.
Just double the number of licenses and add 300,000 (instead of 30)
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Whites and Blacks? The contrast is apparently important, especially in the new Trump presidency. I mean we can't have apes in dress uniforms being mistaken as officers instead of enlisted after all! (What did you think I was implying? :P)
That statement shows how dumb the navy is, or should I say how they think everybody else is dumb. If after buying 38 licensed they assumed that it was then ok to install the software further on thousands of machines why even buy 38 licenses. Just buy one and install everywhere.