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US Navy Under Fire In Mass Software Piracy Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In 2011 and 2012, the U.S. Navy began using BS Contact Geo, a 3D virtual reality application developed by German company Bitmanagement. The Navy reportedly agreed to purchase licenses for use on 38 computers, but things began to escalate. While Bitmanagement was hopeful that it could sell additional licenses to the Navy, the software vendor soon discovered the U.S. Government had already installed it on 100,000 computers without extra compensation. In a Federal Claims Court complaint filed by Bitmanagement two years ago, that figure later increased to hundreds of thousands of computers. Because of the alleged infringement, Bitmanagement demanded damages totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. In the months that followed both parties conducted discovery and a few days ago the software company filed a motion for partial summary judgment, asking the court to rule that the U.S. Government is liable for copyright infringement. According to the software company, it's clear that the U.S. Government crossed a line. In its defense, the U.S. Government had argued that it bought concurrent-use licenses, which permitted the software to be installed across the Navy network. However, Bitmanagement argues that it is impossible as the reseller that sold the software was only authorized to sell PC licenses. In addition, the software company points out that the word "concurrent" doesn't appear in the contracts, nor was there any mention of mass installations. The full motion brings up a wide range of other arguments as well which, according to Bitmanagement, make it clear that the U.S. Government is liable for copyright infringement.
"We need to scope out this Bitmanagement deployment, Lieutenant. How many PCs will need it?"
"Several hundred thousand Sir".
"That's a lot of licenses, is there any way we can get by with fewer?"
"Well Sir, we could switch to a concurrent licensing model."
"How many would we need then?"
Scribble, scribble.
"I make it 38 Sir."
"That sounds better, we'll do that."
Maybe they can get the RIAA to do the math:
150k of statutory damages per willful infringement multiplied by 100k infringements makes 15 billion in statutory damages.
Which leads to the question of who do you call to repo a carrier group.