I have a friend that is an administrator at a engineering firm. He was aware of several copies of a cad program being run without licenses. In several e-mails to his supervisors he spelled out very clearly that this was bad and they needed to "get legal". An ex-employee turned them in to the BSA who went to the feds. The first time my buddy had a hint that it was really a serious situation was a voice from behind his cube saying, "Take your hands off the computer and step out of the cubicle." The BSA under supervision of a single federal agent proceeded to basically shut down this company while doing a full audit. After it was all said and done the company got fined several million dollars, my buddies supervisor was also fined heavily, something like 250,000. The only thing that kept my friend from also being fined was that he had proof that he had raised to issue up the chain and was told to ignore it.
That was just the federal fines for copywrite infringement, last I heard the civil suit brought by the software manufacturer was still in litigation, but was expected to bankrupt the company completely.
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I have a friend that is an administrator at a engineering firm. He was aware of several copies of a cad program being run without licenses. In several e-mails to his supervisors he spelled out very clearly that this was bad and they needed to "get legal". An ex-employee turned them in to the BSA who went to the feds. The first time my buddy had a hint that it was really a serious situation was a voice from behind his cube saying, "Take your hands off the computer and step out of the cubicle." The BSA under supervision of a single federal agent proceeded to basically shut down this company while doing a full audit. After it was all said and done the company got fined several million dollars, my buddies supervisor was also fined heavily, something like 250,000. The only thing that kept my friend from also being fined was that he had proof that he had raised to issue up the chain and was told to ignore it.
That was just the federal fines for copywrite infringement, last I heard the civil suit brought by the software manufacturer was still in litigation, but was expected to bankrupt the company completely.