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US Navy Under Fire In Mass Software Piracy Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the permission-granted dept.

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.

8 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, no! by hey! · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hundreds of millions of dollars? Where will the DoD get that kind of money?

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Oh, no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wait - the copyright lobby have yet to peer-review the maths involved. This will be complex because the plaintiff is German and not American, but I believe the formula they apply is something like:

      sue_for_losses = (actual_losses + made_up_losses) * 1000

      Then, because it's a German company:

      america_first_weighting = 0.0001
      sue_for_losses = sue_for_losses * america_first_weighting

      Next up comes the political stuff:

      sue_for_losses = apply_secret_sauce_no_one_understands(sue_for_losses)

      By the time all that gets done, the German state will end up bailing out Bitmanagement so it can be pay the US government for misuse of their equipment.

    2. Re:Oh, no! by henni16 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. How does it taste? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    As an American I hope this will teach the Us government to stop being douchebags about copywrite infringement. And about most everything else too.

  3. Why GFS is misleading. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Delightfully missing in TFS is that a library, not linked to any executable software, was on a common desktop image. Not an executable, much less a runnable installation.

  4. Re:Been there, done that by rickb928 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many more moons before that, when you were limited to dialup connections, we set up tunnels for authorized clients, RADIUS and all. The stated purpose was to enable radiologists about 100 miles away to access the Solaris machines and read radiology images for diagnosis.

    Imagine our surprise when we saw connections (logging ANI for auditing) originating from India.

    Imagine further surprise when Sun tried to shut this down, claiming they were constrained from delivering the software offshore due to encryption and munitions regulations.

    Several lawyers later they went away, very disappointed in missing out on not only the licensing for few hundred thousand new end-users, but also for the licensing they missed out on when we figured out how other hospitals could share imaging and use our teleradiology services for the cost of a long-distance call. Which got cheaper when we partnered with a nascent DSL provider (NOT the ILEC, mind you), and they got AOL on the side.

    Good times. that odd adapter with the 02DEADBEEF20 MAC address drove me crazy for a few hours, though. And the infiltration of Ethernet into my pristine Token-Ring network, with all the joy that brought.

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    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  5. Re:phone-home software in the navy by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

    Incorrect. They learned the scope of the problem through discovery and adjusted their claims to account for the much more massive copying (the original scope was just the single site where the trial happened). The DoD very much does not allow call home.

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    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  6. Estimates by bestweasel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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."