The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has agreed a settlement worth £10,000 with Blackpool-based company George Morrison over its use of unlicensed software products.
The building services engineering firm was found to have been using products from Microsoft and Autodesk without a license.
Whistleblowers are encouraged to make confidential reports of suspected software piracy through the BSA website with the promise of financial rewards for useful information. The BSA took £2.2 million from UK businesses for piracy in 2010 and said that its enforcement efforts were being aided by disgruntled employees reporting their employers’ lax licensing regimes.
TechWeekEurope understands that the copyright infringements were uncovered by a self-audit that George Morrison was requested to complete after an anonymous complaint was made via the BSA’s web portal.
“Companies must recognise that the abuse of intellectual property rights is a serious offence and will not be accepted,” said Philippe Briere, chair of the BSA UK Committee. “Settlements such as this one can seriously damage a company’s reputation and are evidently costly. What’s more, the use of unlicensed software exposes businesses to significant security risks.”
The BSA says that piracy costs the software industry billions worldwide and released a report in September 2010 that claimed the UK could be missing out on as much as £5.4 billion in lost economic activity by 2013. However many commentators dismissed the findings of the report as “propaganda”.
The alliance has also called Birmingham an “illegal software hotspot” after it was revealed that the city was the source of 15 percent of piracy reports in the UK.
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"abuse of intellectual property rights is a serious offence"
No, it isn't. It's not even as serious as shoplifting (which actually deprives the shop of an item) and a whole different ball game to actually serious offences like assault, kidnap, rape and murder.
"piracy costs the software industry billions"
No, it doesn't. Most unlicensed usage of software is done by people who couldn't afford the licence anyway. Additionally a non-sale is not a cost, it's a reduction in profit.
OTOH, £10k? That's just another incentive to start looking beyond the traditional "pay-per seat" software vendors. If someone from George Morrison wants to contact me I have a great deal of experience finding lower-cost, less restrictive alternatives in a related industry.
It would help britains ecconomy if small buisnesses used open office free office software in place of the cumbersome microsoft offering.
Within two workplaces I visit the licenced ms office causes so many issues for the people that are not trained to use and cannot easily use the features that have been added to the suite.
Open office is free and fully featured. there are many things it can do better than MS office.
I also know of a few companies using very expensive to licence 3d drafting software only because it is pirate. They could actually run their businesses with cheeper or even free drafting software, again deviod of features they do not use.
In defence of pirate software I presently work for a company paying £12000 per year for software that they developed a passion for only by using it in pirate form first.
reply to On March 18, 2012 at 12:09 pm byopenofficeuser , the "reply" button doesnt seem to want to work....
We , rather predictably mainly support the mainstream MS systems and software.
We have had an openoffice/thunderbird only site , albeit running on windows, and generally it was fine.
But.
We never managed to get to the bottom of the shared filelock problem which was actually caused a lot of workrounds, endless calls to us to resolve, lots of fruitless research time and general dissatisfaction all round. Fortunately we didn't specify open source the client did but we were interested enough to gain the support experience.
Also Thunderbird really wasn't as able as it's much maligned MS counterpart, as heavy and big as it is.
From what I have seen if the cost of equipping a commercial enterprise's PCs with MS stuff is so critical to that enterprise's survival then I would question whether the business plan is actually viable in the first place.
The phrase "you get what you pay for" is still valid here.
Why does a music cd from Dionne Warwick holding 704mb of data cost £15, whilst a data cd from Bill Gates holding the same amount of data, costs nearly ten times more?
That is about as sensible as asking why a jamjar filled with gold would be worth more than one filled with silver?? Possibly because a music CD requires a handful of people a few days to create, while a sophisticated software application takes many many man-years to create and test, and then also requires an on-going team to support and emhance.
And after all those years they still have not got it right. Along the ways ideas wee borrowed and bought. You give them far too much reverence.
That is totally ridiculous! Can I assume that you wouldn't mind someone squatting in your house, or taking your consultancy report and distributing it foc to all your potential customers. Companies that develop software applications employ staff, pay taxes, and build up the national economy. The theft that you seem to condone is what creates economies like some of those dragging the Euro down.
Most software licencing issues stem from organisations failing to recognise the residual value of the software they use. This is because many view software purchases in the same way as any other consumable – as a one off payment to cover an immediate need – and not something that delivers fundamental value to the business over time. If they do not believe that software delivers real value, why would they care to licence it?
But organisations must understand that software has residual value. By recognising this, organisations would understand the need to actively manage their licences. By deploying software asset management tools, organisations can not only ensure they’re adequately licensed and avoid the scrutiny of the BSA, but put a real monetary value on the software they use. With this information they can decide from a position of strength which software delivers real value, and which doesn’t.
Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise. In recent years, the risk of software audits has significantly grown as vendors look to supplement their revenue in an economic climate where new sales are not as easy to come by. Gartner’s figures show that software vendor audits are up from 61% to 65% in the last year. Forrester too is seeing a steady increase in calls from enterprises asking for help with software audits.
However, businesses can protect themselves from such unforeseen expenses by adopting software asset management and licence optimisation processes – such an approach undertaken on an ongoing basis pre-empts financial penalties as suffered by George Morrison, but more importantly enables companies to potentially save up to 20 per cent of their overall software spend. There are enterprise licence optimisation tools on the market that facilitate such an approach, businesses of all sizes should consider.
What was interesting is that the company dropped further use of both products afterwards. Replacements on friendlier/no cost terms are easily available.
When technologists run out of useful new product steam, they always bring in 'intellectual property rights' to maintain cashflow from existing buyers.
Microsoft's share price has halved over the last decade, and Autodesk isn't setting any portfolios alight either.
And the BSA's claim that piracy is hitting economic activity here is not true in this case. The company effectively got rid of two aggressive suppliers and carried on.
We created our own licensing system while developing our eFiler network filing and search add-in for Outlook as we recognise the importance of being able not only to help our customers to know how many of their licences are in use and where they are being used, but also to add value to our products by enabling configurations and sets of filing locations for saved emails to be served to client machines along with licences. So it's a winner for everyone.
Also, in America they have the fifth amendment which protects against self-incrimination and it worries me that we still have no such legal framework in the UK.
For an organisation such as the BSA, which actually represents mainly American interests, to act in the US as it does in the UK would not only be illegal but actually unconstitutional.
If you can't afford it, don't steal it!
Just how dumb is that when they could have gotten Sun's compatible Openoffice for free!! Free alternatives to Autocad exist too. Microsoft etc seem to have the business world dazzled in the headlights.
Personally, I regard the 'sale' (because it isn't) of a licence to use software is a scam of enormous proportions. It's like saying you can have an instruction manual but you must buy a licence to use it and continue to pay for that licence year-on-year. Intellectual Property is a ridiculous concept on a par with the copyrighting of a DNA profile. You produce a piece of work and if you wish to receive remuneration for your effort your sell it. Placing a year-on-year added cost to continue to use the software is contrary to normal trading practice - I sell you a hand-made special ladder and require you to pay me a fee in a year's time if you continue to wish to use the ladder and the next year, and the next year, and so on.
This sound like a licence to print money rather than a simple sale. Surely this is unlawful?
The BSA have no power at all and if they turn up on your doorstep tell them where to go.
Do not let them in to your premises and do not let them check what software you are using.
They will try to tell you that they are an official body, they are not!
They have NO RIGHTS to enter your premises at all!
If there is some little squealer in your company, find them and boot them out.
The thought police.... I'm not for software piracy, but employees telling of their employers for financial rewards; perhaps that's too far!