US Navy Forced To Pay Software Company For Piracy 87
The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. Gizmodo reports: The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement. GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015. In the court filing (PDF), GmbH claimed, "Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."
The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."
The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."
154k? (Score:5, Funny)
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You're funny, U.S. government at times buys ammo, materials, electronics from foreign powers. All major powers in the world do that.
the real question is why for over half a million acts of piracy they only had to pay less than 30 cents for each one.
half a million when you count each reimage as inst (Score:2)
half a million when you count each reimage as an install.
Re: 154k? (Score:2)
BS Contact Geo...
If you name your product that you don't deserve money. $154k is recompense for the software audit.
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Is it piracy de jure if I make a copy of your install CD, put the copy on my wife's desk, and she never looks at it?
Random guy off the street: "Maybe?"
Guy who's been in IT for decades: "Eh, you've always been allowed to make backups of install media, so probably not?"
BSA lawyer: "hell yes!" *cha-ching sound heard in the background*
More seriously, if the Navy only had to pay $154k for a supposed over a supposed 558k infringements of a software package that costs around $1000 for a single license, it's pretty clear that the case had to be exceedingly weak.
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Last I checked, Germany was a NATO member...
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A better question would be "Why is a branch of the US military relying on software provided by a foreign power?"
You mean an ally and NATO member? The same kind of ally and NATO member who shares in military hardware like the F-35?
Re: 154k? (Score:2)
are they losing their Internet connection? (Score:2)
More to the point, is the Navy's ISP suspending their service?
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I know, $0.276 per computer - that's it - your country will be essentially unprotected after this payment.
Precedent has been set (Score:2)
Since this is about "copyright infringement", anyone else who steals movies, music, or software can now be successfully sued as well. No excuses such as, "I wouldn't have bought it anyway."
Now let's hear the excuses why all those others aren't doing the same thing.
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for over 558,000 pirated copies, the Navy with its annual budget of 181 billion only had to pay $154K, not even a slap on the wrist.
$154K per 558K pirated copies works out to about 28 cents per act of piracy.
Let's hear your pathetic excuses about why I'm wrong.
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Considering the Navy uninstalled all but 34 copies of the software, that comes out to $5,146.66 per copy, plus penalty. That's easily the cost of the software.
So sure, I'll go for that the next time we hear someone give the excuse, "It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement." They can pay the cost of whatever it is they stole, er, copyright infringed, plus a penalty.
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Wrong! they installed for YEARS and were running that long before now. Guilty as fuck of piracy and should have paid millions.
The way I see it, this means common citizen doing piracy should pay $1.50 or less
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So, which top Navy brass will be hauled into court for this?
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It's true that every single re-imaging is an unlicensed copy, however, when computing damages, actual use is what matters.
The court determined that the actual used infringement was worth $154k.
Your average Joe Schmoe pays $0 for this kind of piracy. Apple and Microsoft don't go after people who install Windows on a VM, even when it's not licensed for it.
Where your average Joe Schmoe gets in trouble is distributing unlicensed IP.
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that's how it works for a citizen with torrent spreading software, installs aren't mentioned in court.
You have no point, there are two standards and the Navy got the easy one.
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that's how it works for a citizen with torrent spreading software, installs aren't mentioned in court.
Incorrect.
You have no point, there are two standards and the Navy got the easy one.
Not at all. You're just ignorant and have no desire to fix that, because you're proud of your ignorance. You wear it like a badge of honor. It's not as cool as you think it is.
In a case where a person is spreading software, each time its spread can be considered some fraction of a potential lost sale.
Everyone is held to this standard.
The reason you don't see this standard applied here, is the it doesn't fucking apply here.
Companies can make a mistake (as happened here) and install their soft
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You are ignorant and wrong. Piracy cases of distribution have been made without regard to installs, only number of copies distributed. Piracy cases have been made with number of infringements of copyright license.
You spew out of your ass in utter ignorance of the case law.
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You are ignorant and wrong.
I can cite court cases all day showing I'm not.
You can't cite one showing you are.
Piracy cases of distribution have been made without regard to installs, only number of copies distributed.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Bingo, dipshit.
The US Navy distributed zero copies of this software to other parties.
But thank you for making my point for me.
Remember when I said,
The reason you don't see this standard applied here, is the it doesn't fucking apply here.
Companies can make a mistake (as happened here) and install their software on every machine in an imaging snafu. The law doesn't punish for copyright infringement, the law seeks to make whole.
Piracy cases have been made with number of infringements of copyright license.
You cannot cite one example of that, because that's a lie.
Learn to read, you ignorant fucking ditch digger. [cornell.edu]
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Ignorant and wrong. The law does have punishment for copyright infringement, you now triple down on your ignorance.
For starters have a look at
17 U.S.C. 506(A) AND 18 U.S.C 2319
and educate your ignorant self.
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This is civil infringement.
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by
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You're being pathetic, distribution of software in violation of copyright is criminal given value. Piracy is illegal and has punishment under the law, get it through your skull.
Your ignorance of the law is so immense you may as well be a savage.
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Which do you think applies:
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the p
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look at you ignoring the violation of point B
Your head is up your ass, you're hopeless and digging yourself into deeper hole.
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It's actually strikingly simple, just or not it may be in yours or my opinion.
When bringing a copyright infringement suit, you have 2 options for damages.
Actual Damages (standard tort case), or Statutory Damages.
With Actual Damages, the court and (defendant or plaintiff) must agree upon a reasonable system for which a hypothetical attempt at following the rules would have made the plaintiff whole.
This is what happened in the
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such ignorance, quoting civil suit law only
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There was no criminal activity here.
Further, your claim of "The Gubmint is treated differently than people!!!!" is hilarious, because DMCA cases are 100% civil as well.
This all started with your claim:
The way I see it, this means common citizen doing piracy should pay $1.50 or less
This is laughable, because you are directly conflating civil and criminal copyright infringement.
Criminal copyright prosecutions are vanishingly rare, because the statute that defines it is very narrow.
Sharing software in violation of copyright licensing
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No need to forget; the Navy only uninstalled the software, they didn't delete stuff they'd made using the software.
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This is the second time in the topic you've called copyright infringement stealing, but this time you've sarcastically corrected yourself. What's your issue with copyright infringement not being the same as stealing? Do you not understand why they are different things? With copyright infringement, I'd be making an unathorised copy of something. This could be me copying out a copyrighted book by hand, or it could be me using a computer to copy a copyrighted set of 1s and 0s. As long as I'm not removing a cop
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I believe an argument can be made that it is theft, as long one accepts the premise that things which may not have any kind of material presence may have measurable value to people, and that the law has the ability to recognize the concept of ownership of non-physical property.
What a copyright infringer actually steals when they commit copyright infringement is a measure of the exclusivity that the copyright holder was originally intended to have over deciding who may copy their work. While if only a si
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Yeah that payout is really weird. The original lawsuit claimed the price of the software was $1K per seat.
The navy got some accountant in who made the argument it was worth $200 per seat, which apparently the court agreed with.
So at 28c a seat payout, it seems the actual figure comes out 714 times lower than the actual license fee.
I'm puzzled as to why the payout is so low.
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An article I read said that:
1. The Navy had the right to make unlimited copies of the software.
2. The Navy only had a small number of people actually using the software and so the actual count of violations was quite small.
Re:Precedent has been set (Score:5, Informative)
Ok I've gone and read the judgement , and heres whats going on. Heres the ruling;-
So basically this low estimate has 3 parts to it;-
1) The court found the license seat was $200. The Company claims its about $1K, the navy and the court disagree.
2) The court found that despite the seat claims there where only around 635 users.
3) For 100 of those seats the price would have been $350 for what I *think* is a floating seat type arangement.
This $115K.
Personally I think thats a pretty lobsided judgement, and I doubt it'd even pay the lawyers fees. If I was Bitmanagement I'd be appealing the shit out of this one on the basis of facts of the case. IF Bitmanagement can actually come up with proof that those other 500K claimed seats where something that existed. I'd probably ask the court to reexamine that $200K. Why some rando accountant is the expert of the companies prices and not the company itself is somewhat mystifying.
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And by $200K read that as just $200.
This ridiculous site needs an edit button, because its 2022.
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To paraphrase someone:
Read the goddam paper first before shooting your mouth off.
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The $1000 quoted is a number given by the Plaintiff, it's not the dollar amount contracted to the Navy.
If the court were to accept the $1000 price point, what's to stop Plaintiff from raising the cost to $1,000,000 a seat and asking for that in damages?
The Navy made a big booboo, here (BSA audits find this shit all the time), but Plaintiff's $600M asking price is laughably malicious.
They stood exactly zero chance of that payout, because the legal reasoning for it is a complete farce
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The Navy presented evidence that their cost was $200 per seat, based upon the licenses purchased, and the actual usage, and the Plaintiff offered no evidence but a price-per-seat that they charge in a vacuum.
The court's reasoning was sound. Expert witness provided reasonable logic that had the Navy stayed legit, they would have purchased licenses that would have given them the correct amount of usage fo
Re:Precedent has been set (Score:5, Interesting)
First, the price determination wasn't made by the Navy. It was made by an unaffiliated professional witness who handles these types of price determinations for infringement between parties.
The Navy did not pay $1000 per seat.
They were discounted to $300 a seat, and contracted at that price.
Expert Witness demonstrated that in the infringing time period, licenses were available for as low as $80 per seat due to declining demand for the software.
He then determined that in the infringing period, to come fully into compliance, the Navy would have paid up to $200 per seat, and that Plaintiff would have agreed to that price.
It should be noted that initially, this Expert Witness was precluded from testifying in the trial. After the case was appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, they remanded it back down to the Circuit Court saying that the determinations of the Circuit Court that it used to exclude the Expert Witness were in fact erroneous.
Navy's Expert Witness (again, not affiliated with the Navy) used financial information from the company to come to his determination for what a hypothetical negotiated price would have been for actually used seats- which is actually exactly what caselaw says you are to do in this instance.
Plaintiff's Expert Witness rather testified that damages should be based upon all infringements (installation) [which is incorrect], and used the full price of the product for the hypothetically negotiated price [which is laughable].
The whole thing is pretty sound reasoning.
If forced to choose between the Navy's Expert Witness, and Plaintiff's claims, only the Navy's Expert Witness testimony holds even an ounce of water.
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"The Navy did not pay $1000 per seat.
They were discounted to $300 a seat, and contracted at that price.
Expert Witness demonstrated that in the infringing time period, licenses were available for as low as $80 per seat due to declining demand for the software.
He then determined that in the infringing period, to come fully into compliance, the Navy would have paid up to $200 per seat, and that Plaintiff would have agreed to that price"
And they sued for $600 million? Sounds like they were trying to make up for
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The Navy did in fact owe them money, because the Navy did in fact infringe... but the lawsuit doesn't appear to have been in good faith at all.
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Yeah, but if your company bought an enterprise license that gives 500 users a license for $5000, that equates to $10 per user. When large companies need multiple licenses, they don't pay the same price as the boxed version in a retail store. The $200 per user is probably the listed price on Bitmanagement's price sheet for a 500+ license package.
Back when Microsoft and Adobe had licensed products instead for per-month pricing, enterprise licensing was in increasing blocks -- 5 users, 50 users, 100+ users,
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"The buyer doesn't get to set prices; the vendor does."
The market sets prices, i.e. the buyer and seller by mutual consent. $1000 per seat is just the initial upper bound.
For example, the contracted price for the licenses the US Navy did buy was $300 per seat. We also know that demand curves slope downward.
Shoplifting. (Score:2)
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It seems like Bitmanagement screwed themselves by trying to claim for far more licences than they could prove. While the Navy did try to hide the scale of the infringement by disabling detection of the software by an auditing suite, Bitmanagement's figures are not supported by the facts.
On top of that they tried to claim a sum for each infringement that was a multiple of what they normally charge customers for volume licences.
Because of that the judge seems to have settled on the lowest reasonable figure, a
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What the fuck? The courts feel they have the right to set the price of a private company's product license ?
Let's see the courts do some software engineering to get a feel for the worth of a license.
"Hey computer, I realise that we've spent six months and so far have the text 'hello world' on the screen but if you don't write the rest of the code yourself, we'll go for the death penalty and then you'
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So basically this low estimate has 3 parts to it;-
1) The court found the license seat was $200. The Company claims its about $1K, the navy and the court disagree.
2) The court found that despite the seat claims there where only around 635 users.
3) For 100 of those seats the price would have been $350 for what I *think* is a floating seat type arangement.
I wonder why these prices even matter. When a kid gets convicted of copyright infringement on a CD, he does not get fined 99 cents per song. It's $30,000 per infringement so $3,000,000 if there are 10 songs on the CD. So why don't they just take the number of infringements, I'll round it to 500, multiply by $30,000 and set the fine at $15,000,000?
Ok, to be fair I guess these amounts usually get adjusted. But still where's the punishment if the Navy just pays what it should have paid all along, without even
an real price per unit & an real number of ins (Score:2)
an real price per unit & an real number of installed units.
154,400/200 = 772
so 772 sounds like an real number of used installs not the 558,466 machines that seems like the RIAA math number.
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Yep. And the precedent is also set for $0.28 per infringment.
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This was only in 2016. It was barely 4 years prior when "per-seat" was changed from "using" to "anything"
Prior to that it was completely legal. Even today the law says it is legal. The circuit judges took it upon themselves to start classifying it as copyright infringement.
Since per-seat means per-seat, it is common practice to add the software into your base windows image, so that you can use your licensed number of seats at any moment without having to uninstall and reinstall the software.
If the compan
Re:Precedent has been set (Score:4, Interesting)
I wholeheartedly agree with you except I'd like to play Devil's advocate here for a second.
"...can't even be used is enough proof there's no license violation."
So does that mean if I make 100,000 copies of a DVD movie in Region 4 format there's no violation because I live in the U.S. which is Region 1?
Because technically if I gave these out to people they aren't going to be able to do anything with them. Unless of course they buy special equipment. Which would then prove they are actively seeking to violate the law.
How is this any different?
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Otherwise yes, your logic would have been sound.
The software company got screwed! (Score:1)
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Funnier that they could have used open source solutions for free without the public backlash and fines. Kinda shows you a lot about their biases.
got them down to an real number of installs as wel (Score:2)
got them down to an real number of installs as well
GmbH is not the name of the company (Score:5, Informative)
GmbH means A Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung which is a type of legal entity very common in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Editors, apply yourself!
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Yes, GmbH just means "company with limited liability". At least they didn't make the capitalisation error "GmBH" that I've seen English speakers make - that reads as "Gesellschaft mit Büstenhalter" (company with bra).
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"GmBH"? Nice! Never heard that one before.
As a note to the editors, you would abbreviate this company name as "Bitmanagement".
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To give the editors a tiny bit of credit, that error appears in the source article as well. Still feels like something that should be caught, but a tad more understandable.
That will teach them (Score:2)
Pirates? In the Navy? (Score:5, Funny)
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In the Navy, isn't piracy punishable by fish feeding though?
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The flag makes it legal
"GmbH claimed" haha (Score:2)
GmbH claimed they had ...
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Maybe the author thought it was some sort of surname.
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Maybe the author thought it was some sort of surname.
It's a German company, not a Polish one.
Thank goodness (Score:2)
But as it is foreign software...meh
Navy convicted of piracy? (Score:3)
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Should have found them a criminal enterprise (Score:2)
Then shut them down and lock up the leadership. After all, we are tough on crime and in particular on copyright infringement! Right?
Pirates (Score:3)
US Navy is pirates! Arrrghhh.
GmbH is NOT the name of the company (Score:1)
GmbH is the german equivalent of the Ltd. qualification of a company. It translates literally to: Company with limited Liability - Gesellschaft mit beschrÃnkter Haftung.
professional (Score:1)