Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software 266
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.
What will they charge per pirated copy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyvio happen all the time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some cynical emails by me later and they eventually removed the content (they properly didn't want to include the GFDL into their propaganda material, as it would be quite contrary to all the pro-copyright stuff). This shows us: even those who try to make us believe copyright is important don't really care much about it when _they_ want to copy something.
Re:Why it does not happen more often? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why it does not happen more often? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, auditing software tends to have the most obscure licensing terms and is frequently next to useless anyway - either because it only goes by what's in the registry for "Add/Remove Programs" (so some dodgy copy of an application which was hacked around and no longer appears in "Add/Remove Programs" won't be caught) or it just gives you a list of every
It is for all practical purposes impossible to put hand-on-heart and say "I can guarantee that we're not using a single piece of pirated software" in any significantly sized business today. About the best you can do is say "I'm pretty sure we're not, however if you can provide evidence that I'm wrong I will be happy to look at resolving the issue - either by using an alternative product or buying whatever it is that we're missing".
I would gladly migrate the entire enterprise over to Free (either speech or beer) software tomorrow for every single business need - it would eliminate that worry at a stroke - but this is the real world and half-decent Free accounting and payroll applications are pretty thin on the ground.
My guess is that someone less than honest installed the application in the past with a pirated key and left the company. Their successor ran into trouble with the application and did the sensible thing - called the vendor.
Re:Inside Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What will they charge per pirated copy? (Score:5, Interesting)
That makes no sense. In P2P situations, the idea is that the person has shared each song with lots of people who would otherwise have bought it. Nobody is accusing Sony of putting this software on a P2P network, so where would the idea of "theoretical lost sales" come from? The number of lost sales is known, it's the number of installations Sony were using.
I'm all for holding Sony to their own standards, but let's not just invent crazy behaviour and pretend it's the same thing.
Re:Inside Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
I looked at it rather suspiciously and asked her for the license documentation. She handed me a hand written license key on note paper.
I asked her where she got the CD and I gave this guy a call. He was a tech at the corporate offices on the left coast. I asked him about it and asked how many licenses we had. (I was thinking they might have a corporate license and just needed to know who had the app installed)
He replied that the company had 5 licenses. I asked him how many systems it was installed on. "Umm 50 here I think."
Yeah, right. I reminded him that it was not a good idea to install apps without a license. He agreed, but was ordered to do it by the head of the department that uses this thing.
(Management by threat is the standard with this company)
Knowing where this was going I thanked him, told my supervisor, (Who almost had kittens when I filled him in), broke the CD in front of him and another witness and then told the user that the app wasn't going on her system.
Moving forward, I have second hand information that this problem was reported up the line twice to the VP who managed my org. I personally told him that we had at least 35 illegal copies, (installed by the users themselves when we refused to do it), and that considering the numbers of DBA's and developers in the company, we might be out of compliance to the tune of 1-2 million dollars.
His exact words were:
"I don't want to hear about this. If I hear about this officially, then I'll have to do something about it."
This bozo was dumb enough to say that to me in front of witnesses.
My local group continued refusing to install this thing and kept extensive documentation, (CYA type), regarding this.
Shortly before I left a panicked data call from the CIO came down asking for the number of installs at our site. I had the number of course, but I like to think that someone blew the whistle on them.
Shortly after I left, both the VP I reported to and the CIO either wanted to "Spend more time with their families, or seek new alternatives elsewhere".
Re:Awesome... (Score:2, Interesting)
And when the RIAA/Sony/whoever comes to prosecute you for filesharing, they really care that it's just your 15 year old son sharing a torrent against your permission.
Maybe they need to check their code a bit better?
Re:Inside Sony (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:corepirate nazi softwar gangsters killing off.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Pirated" can mean many things (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it is perfectly possible to "pirate" open source software. However the risk tends to be exclusivly on the party distributing it. So long as you arn't distributing the software then there isn't an issue, even if whoever you got it from didn't do everything they should.
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.
If this is happening then at least the corporation in question is protecting itself from the risks associated with proprietary software.
And procurement doesn't like it either.
It probably isn't cheap to have a suitably qualified lawyer check an EULA either.
Re:What will they charge per pirated copy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Internal corporate fileservers are not explicitly designed to do any such thing.
Again, that makes no sense. Sony were raided. They know exactly how many unauthorised installations there were.
I know it feels good to try to hang them by their own rope, but you just sound stupid when you say stuff like this. It doesn't resemble their own arguments, so it isn't hanging them by their own rope.
They've been caught infringing copyrights, they'll be prosecuted and their hypocritical behaviour has been exposed. Isn't that enough without trying to drag stupid arguments like this into it? It's almost as if you are trying to discredit the arguments against them by making them sound like the ravings of morons.
Re:Not surprising (Score:1, Interesting)
I worked for a bank in the 90's and their compliance policy was that "Every single PC needed to have a box and manual for everything on it". If it didn't they would fire the employee.
It always stuck me as inefficient and expensive, but now that I think about it, compared to the cost of having a person validate everything, or getting caught with your pants down, it was a bargain.
They didn't do site licenses, license packs or anything else. If your machine had MS Office, you had better have a box in your desk that says "Microsoft Office" on it.
If it didn't come as "1 copy per box", they generally wouldn't buy it.
Re:Inside Sony (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, i think the phrase "company-wide problem" is meaningless anyway. Someone was in charge - IT department, company division, one OFFICE, it doesn't matter how high or how low - and it was their responsibility. Take away the "wide:" it is a COMPANY problem.
I've been a sysadmin for companies, and we (IT) would occasionally have to reject users, managers, and even C-levels who wanted "just a copy or two" or their favorite software installed without proper licensing. We were responsible for it, we were responsible for explaining the liability and ethical issues behind our decision not to do it, and the company would be responsible for it. Period.
To quote Mr. Bierce, "Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility." They follow the inverse of the just-following-orders excuse: some underling did it, we didn't know, it's not our fault, it's not policy, it's an isolated insident, we aren't responsible.
Yes you are.
Re:Inside Sony (Score:1, Interesting)
Nothing new under the sun (Score:5, Interesting)
This fight isn't about the right or wrong of copyright, it never has been. It's about a bunch of folks fighting to protect their livelihoods. This is a perfectly natural thing for them to do and something we all understand. Unsurprisingly the folks fighting the hardest are the folks whose positions are becoming superfluous under the new system. I could even forgive them, except most of the current batch of record/movie execs have never been anything but scum sucking parasites as their positions have been tecnically superfluous since before they got them.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Interesting)
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=379451&cid=21579069 [slashdot.org]
The recent era of plebs having the opportunity to better themselves whether in wealth or knowledge, and to live freely at the will of no other but subject to uniform laws that apply equally to all, will be seen in the vast scope human history as a short-lived blip that has more to do with the back-to-back industrial/information revolution than anything else. Disruptive tech has always caused upheaval until the it's subverted and the new order is established; welcome to the new order, same as the old order.
The wealth redistribution is just the system returning to ground state after its recent (in historical scope) excitation.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have a solution to this problem, other than deciding that certain people need to have their choices made for them, 'for their own good'?
N.B. I am not arguing against a 'social safety net', just against the concept that any unequal income distribution is inherently unjust. In most cases the cure for this pseudo-problem is worse than the disease.