Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

An anonymous reader sends us to ZeroPaid, which seems to be the only site in English to have picked up a story out of France involving Sony and piracy. Except this time the shoe is on the other foot. The small software company PointDev learned that Sony BMG was using a pirated license for one of its system administration tools. PointDev got bailiffs to raid a Sony property and they found pirated software on four servers. The source article (link is to a Google translation of French original) quotes PointDev's spokesman claiming that the BSA believes 47% of software used in corporations to be illegal — whether he is referring to Sony in particular is not clear in the translation.

Why it does not happen more often?

[Herkum01]

I am surprised that this does not occur more than it does in large businesses like Sony, the scale of the company increases the number of opportunities for this to occur. Also there are more people that have guilty knowledge that something like this occurred. It would only take one of these people to become disgruntled and rat out their employer( for a finder's fee of course).

Re:Bad summary

[ScrewMaster]

Frankly, given the sheer size and worldwide distribution of that company and its various divisions, I'd wager that nobody at Sony has any idea what that percentage really is either. That's true for any behemoth corporation: tracking licenses is a full-time job for some people.

"Pirated" can mean many things

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding the 47% number, this can mean a couple of things.

First, it may mean the corporation just doesn't have the documentation that verifies they legally own the software they bought. Microsoft is famous for shaking down corporations that have either misplaced or misdocumented licenses in order to force them to buy again or upgrade software.

Also, this likely includes various "non-commercial use only" freeware. Software like Toad, which you can use for free at home, but at work you have to pay to use. I always see situations where someone on a project team knows "this freeware I use at home" and it becomes part of the regular toolset. Unknowing, of course, that they are technically pirating that software.

I don't condone piracy by any means. I just avoid it by using open source software with an OSI approved license. The legal traps these corporations put into their proprietary products is burdensome. To go through procurement for every little text editor or utility is absurd in any large corporation. You'll wait 5 weeks to get something you just needed to use for a single day. And procurement doesn't like it either. License management is a bitch.

So instead of Photoshop, use GIMP. Instead of Toad, use SquirrelSQL. Instead of UltraEdit, use gVIM or jEdit. Obviously if you are some kind of power user that uses Photoshop all day every day, it may be worth your time to request a license. But if you just need it every once in a while, fuck it, just use GIMP.

Same goes for libraries. Why pay thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for proprietary widgets, toolkits, and frameworks when the best of breed is probably open source (LGPL or Apache) anyway? But I'm guessing I'm preaching to the choir.

Use the RIAA's math to figure damages

[eagl]

Use the RIAA's math to figure damages... A single shared 3 minute song is worth many thousands of dollars in damages to the RIAA, so some software that took thousands of man-hours to create ought to be worth a few billion.

Sony needs to put up or shut up.

Re:Why it does not happen more often?

[bluesky74656]

Not quite. I think the employee made called PointDev tech support, and PointDev got suspicious when they couldn't find Sony in their customer database. My impression is that it wasn't the intention of the employee to rat out Sony.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[History's Coming To]

All I ask is a little consistency....

Either pirating other people's work (software, mp3 etc) is right or wrong. If it's right, then why are you laughing at this, according to half of the /.'ers they have the moral right to. If it's wrong, then they've quite rightly been done and you should go delete any pirated software you have. One of the reasons I switched to Linux is to get software that I couldn't otherwise afford, and do it legally. This story is going to show up a lot of hypocrisy.

Re:Inside Sony

[value_added]

I know for a fact that all the commercial software I have knowledge of is properly licensed.

That may be true, but it's never the "known knowns" that get you in trouble. ;-) Either way, for a system administrator, my compliments on parsing your words as carefully as a recent member of the Justice Department appearing before a Senate subcomittee.

The question for your bosses, on the other hand, is there commercial software about which they have no knowledge that isn't properly licensed? Apparently there is. And that fact reflects badly on the public image of a company, among other things, even if the transgression occurred in someone else's division.

Re:What will they charge per pirated copy?

[mr_matticus]

Somewhere between $750 and $150,000 per copy, unless they want to prove actual damages in excess of that amount (unlikely). Not much of a thought exercise, there.

As to what a 92,000% markup has to do with anything, who knows. You're off by a factor of ten based on the amount in one example case, but moreover, it's not a markup, because it's not based on a retail price.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

All I ask is a little consistency.... Either pirating other people's work (software, mp3 etc) is right or wrong. If it's right, then why are you laughing at this, according to half of the /.'ers they have the moral right to. If it's wrong, then they've quite rightly been done and you should go delete any pirated software you have. One of the reasons I switched to Linux is to get software that I couldn't otherwise afford, and do it legally. This story is going to show up a lot of hypocrisy.

We're not laughing because they're pirates. Hell, if this was just about anyone else, we'd be bitching about the search being on flimsy pretexts. We're laughing because we hate hypocrites, particularly hypocrites who hack our boxes and sue us without evidence. I hope they throw the book at these clowns.

Re:Inside Sony

[mpe]

I work in one of the US divisions of Sony as a system administrator. I know for a fact that all the commercial software I have knowledge of is properly licensed.

Depending on the exact definition of "commercial software" you happen to be be using then you could be "pirating" quite a bit of software. Just because software is not "commercial" does not mean that it is exempt from copyright.

Re:Awesome...

[Lemmy Caution]

So? If one's kid is downloading music illegally at home, in "complete violation" of the family's policy, does that protect the parents from the various industry groups that might press lawsuits?

Re:Inside Sony

[Ecuador]

Yeah, you really back up what you say by posting as an Anonymous Coward.

So, it was probably just a "rogue admin", maybe it was easier to get it pirated than to go through the proper channels, or maybe it was deemed too expensive for what it was offering. In any case it was willful infrigement and I think Sony BMG should pay 150.000 x the price of the software for each violation. Note that the number is not selected randomly - it is the equivalent of the cases where Sony BMG is suing.
I should note that the software in question even offered a 30-day evaluation.

Re:Inside Sony

[Lemmy Caution]

This makes the hypocrisy/Schadenfreude even sweeter. Sony/BMG is a music publishing company, an active member in the RIAA and its global equivalents. I'm usually one for nuanced views on these things, but in this case I want see them hoisted so hard by their own petard that they'll never be able to even look at a petard [phrases.org.uk] again without wincing.

Re:Why it does not happen more often?

[gnasher719]

OUCH! Even stupeder than taht! Read on, an employee contacted the software company for tech support!

How would that be stupid? As an employee myself, who is not working in the purchasing department, I cannot possibly have knowledge whether each piece of software that I am using is properly licensed, but I work under the assumption that all the software is licensed properly. Accordingly, I would feel free to contact someone's tech support if needed. Anyway, having fewer licenses than needed can be explained by negligence; having no license at all means something seriously dodgy is going on.

Re:Copyvio happen all the time...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Just a sidenote: copyright is important for GFDL and GPL as well. Without copyright law, GPL'd code becomes essentially BSD-licensed one, if not public domain.

Your point gets made a lot around here. But it doesn't take into account the bigger picture.

Stallman's goal is that the market for software will eventually get to a point a lot like where the automotive market is today. Software without source code is like a car with the engine compartment welded shut. No one would buy a car like that because it is a basic expectation that anyone should be able to open up their car and work on their engine -- even if 99% of car owners never do and just let a mechanic take care of things, the expectation is still there.

Similarly with Stallman's goals for the software marketplace - even though the vast majority of buyers will never take a peek at the source, the ability to do so will become a baseline assumption. In a market like that, there is no need for copyright laws to enforce software Freedom, no one will be able to make a living selling non-Free software.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[PopeRatzo]

the BSA believes 47% of software used in corporations to be illegal

The plan is to make every single person on earth an outlaw. This way, "The Law" can be used for purposes of control instead of to facilitate transactions among us as was intended.

There is underway currently the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and it's going from workers to the very rich. Sort of socialism in reverse, and the result will be that the world will become a very unpleasant place in which to live for most of us.

Everyone is guilty

[HangingChad]

the BSA believes 47% of software used in corporations to be illegal

I believe that's referring to companies in France but, in my experience, I've never been in an enterprise that would survive a 100% audit and not find something out of spec in its license.

To me that's one of the best reasons to run F/OSS. Which makes it ironic that MSFT claims using F/OSS is a liability. Well, how does that liability compare to the near guarantee of of a big fine in the event of a BSA audit?

Perhaps someone with more legal background could answer the question of if you're not running any proprietary software, if BSA would be able to claim grounds for an audit? The obvious answer is no....but how would you prove you don't have any BSA covered software on your system? Or do you need to? I'm not at all clear how that process works. Maybe I should call myself into their hotline and see how they handle it.

Re:Inside Sony

[Opportunist]

I was about to say that. Are you sure everything's licensed?

I'm getting more and more the idea EULAs and copyright law altogether are created in such a way to ensure you can find something if you wanted to. I'm even willing to accept that in this case, the responsible admin thought everything is properly licensed, and that it was an oversight, not deliberate piracy, as in so many cases where the BSA crashed into a company and pulled them into the spotlight for piracy, copyright infringment and other, similar crimes.

What I wonder now is whether Sony gets off the hook easily or whether they have to go through the usual ordeals.

Re:What will they charge per pirated copy?

[Wavebreak]

*Wooosh*

AC posting

[dreamchaser]

Most people when speaking about affairs at their employer are smart to post as an AC.

Re:AC posting

[dreamchaser]

Quite true, but that does not mean that all AC's are lying shills. All murders are commited by humans, but not all humans are murderers. Same logic ;)

Re:Let me be the first to say

[rossifer]

Hypocrisy is the worst offense against trust and righteousness that can be made.

Their argument regarding intellectual property is one of righteousness. Their hypocrisy reveals that they are merely a revenue maximizing engine attempting to extract as much profit as possible from a set of rules that they choose to pay attention to only when it suits their self-interest.

The larger discussion about morality, legality and license/copyright violations is fairly complex, but my opinion is that that issue is extremely far away from right/wrong or ethical/unethical, and is instead only in the realm of legal/illegal. The act of making an unauthorized copy of a creative work is illegal, but not immoral (IMHO). If you choose to make such a copy, you're assuming the responsibility for the chance that you may be detected and sued by the **AA, but that's about it. Nobody feels bad about it, and quite honestly, I don't think anyone should feel bad.

Sony, on the other hand, has been pursuing severe penalties for the exact same acts that they are also guilty of. So they're not only acting illegally, but they are also immoral because of their hypocrisy.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would he? He's an ideologue. You could provide proofs from here to the ends of the earth, and he would disagree because he 'feels' different. Nevermind empirical evidence, I have personal opinion.

Re:Why it does not happen more often?

[fermion]

This is exactly what the BSA is pushing with it's turn you boss in bounty. Just like witch trials and Hitler youth, it is a terror technique used force businesses in a competitive market to cave into protection rackets. I saw this in several places, where huge amounts of company resources were used to acquire, install, and maintain auditing software.

Of course a businesses should not be under such uncertainty. I mean, in the US the congress is constantly trying to halt the uncertainty that consumer litigation causes though unmanaged risk, but has done nothing to halt such uncertainty on the B2B side. One can only imagine that this is because protection rackets are somehow critical to the economy.

In any case this is of note, and not hypocritical at all, because if Sony had proper auditing software installed, in the same way that they wanted to install auditing software as a way to manage the consumers of their entertainment product, then this would not have happened. The auditing software would have flagged the product, and Sony could have paid the licensing fees. As it is, Sony chose not to follow the rules that it set for others, and an innocent call has exposed it to whole pot full of pain. Of course, it is hard to feel sorry for them because Sony, through the RIAA, has not problem in causing parents a whole of pain for the acts of their children, even to the point of asking for a large chunk of year revenue. If we value software at the inflated rate that music is valued, I think that BMG should fork over at least 50% of the 1 billion dollars it made last year.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing both of you fail to take into consideration in your statistical propaganda is that the sheer number of the "wealthy 10%" increases linearly to our exponential population growth. One could assume that this would increase the ideological diversity of the rich, some of which may be enlightened enough to take charitable initiatives and prevent the "not very nice world" you claim is inebidibidible on the horizon. Of course, this assumption is also asinine. You really just can't extrapolate a whole lot from the data you've cited, other than the fact that people tend to take economic advantage of other people when they can get away with it.

Change requires action. Take it!

Ethics, morals and all that jazz.

[jotaeleemeese]

Do you know how much copyright used to last?

14 years.

Yep, 14 years after publication you were free to copy at your heart content any material and publish it.

Now it is death of copyright holder + 100 years. So for most productive people this translates in copyrights that extend for the best part of 150 years.

This is sick, insane, unethical and immoral.

The outrage is not that people in Slashdot seem more willing to endorse piracy more openly than most other people. The real outrage is that elected representatives everywhere have legislated to the current state of affairs (extending to international conventions), that private companies have corrupted copyright to such an extent, and that there are people like you demanding that others conform to a situation that is clearly not sustainable in a social system that prizes cooperation and inventiveness.

People are not pirating stuff because they are bad or unethical. People are pirating stuff because they know they have been screwed and are not willing to pay homage to the screwers.

 

Re:Let me be the first to say

[PitaBred]

If that other company had called loudly and publicly for the limitations of our rights to use "intellectual property", I'd laugh at them, too. You don't laugh when a dog bites a kid, but you do laugh when the dog bites the guy who trained it as an attack dog. Irony and hypocrisy all wrapped up into one big ol' chuckle.