Remember when they come through your front door that they are going to have to do their audit by hand, No installing softwre on your machine without your permission. That would mean you could demand that the marshals arrest them under various anti hacking laws, No copying the contents of your computer. The registry on that windows box might be their file but by adding your own components to the box then you could claim it is a work of art and hence any attempt to decode the registry should be punished to the full extent of the DCMA. so instead of just inserting a disk and getting it to turn out a printout of installed software, they are going to have to go through it by hand. refuse them access to any sections of the disk that may contain customer information on the grounds that you have similar contracts with your customers to guarantee the privacy of their data and so they cant have the machine or a copy of the disk for examination. Always place your directories in a non obvious arangement so that it will take extra time to run the audit prepare to go out of business whilst fighting their lawyers.
This of course is assuming your software is legal.
Just a small question that I think backs up your position,
Do shopkeepers have to buy a special licence to sell software on to us or by the terms of M$'s own licence are all upgrade copies of all their software illegal because we have bought them from shops. Surely if we follow the line of reasoning in their licences then when the retailer buys a copy of windows from them then they are not allowed by law to sell it on to anyone else.
If this isn't true then somehow at some magical point then the package that you have acquired in the shop undergoes a transformation from Item of goods to work of art. and so is covered by copyright licensing rather than object sales laws.
If you want to follow this to a really convoluted end then It could be argued that Software pirates are not doing anything illegal as long as they never install the software on their computer
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Remember when they come through your front door that they are going to have to do their audit by hand, No installing softwre on your machine without your permission. That would mean you could demand that the marshals arrest them under various anti hacking laws,
No copying the contents of your computer. The registry on that windows box might be their file but by adding your own components to the box then you could claim it is a work of art and hence any attempt to decode the registry should be punished to the full extent of the DCMA. so instead of just inserting a disk and getting it to turn out a printout of installed software, they are going to have to go through it by hand.
refuse them access to any sections of the disk that may contain customer information on the grounds that you have similar contracts with your customers to guarantee the privacy of their data and so they cant have the machine or a copy of the disk for examination.
Always place your directories in a non obvious arangement so that it will take extra time to run the audit
prepare to go out of business whilst fighting their lawyers.
This of course is assuming your software is legal.
Just a small question that I think backs up your position,
Do shopkeepers have to buy a special licence to sell software on to us or by the terms of M$'s own licence are all upgrade copies of all their software illegal because we have bought them from shops. Surely if we follow the line of reasoning in their licences then when the retailer buys a copy of windows from them then they are not allowed by law to sell it on to anyone else.
If this isn't true then somehow at some magical point then the package that you have acquired in the shop undergoes a transformation from Item of goods to work of art. and so is covered by copyright licensing rather than object sales laws.
If you want to follow this to a really convoluted end then It could be argued that Software pirates are not doing anything illegal as long as they never install the software on their computer