Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

Depending on your point of view, the Business Software Alliance’s recent likening of illegal software users to the increasingly-active Somali pirates has either earned the watchdog a lot of valuable column inches or seriously affected their credibility in the market.

It was perhaps inevitable that the comparison was going to attracts accusations of bad taste (or simple downright over-exageration) from the media, including the UK’s national newspaper, The Guardian and IT gossip site, The Register.

But it raises a fundamental question - what is the best way to describe the illegal use (some would call it theft, some not) of digital materials?

In the context of software licensing, compliance and - in its broader sense - Software Asset Management (SAM), the main cause of illegal use (within organizations, at least) is not so much a conscious decision to deliberately ‘pirate’ software applications so much as a systematic failure to manage software properly.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Network reportedly prefers terms such as “unauthorized copying” or “prohibited copying” - and while these are undoubtedly accurate, they lack the impact of “piracy”. Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics, prefers “Dobbery” as an abbreviation for digital robbery.

Despite the inability to agree on a single term, or even the criticism levelled at the BSA for its attempts to equate digital piracy with recent events off the African Horn, the fact is that software vendors are still losing huge sums of legitimate revenue because organizations are not paying for all the software they use.

For as long as that is happening, there will be piracy / dobbery / prohibited copying / unauthorized copying [choose your own favorite!] to be clamped-down on by the vendors and watchdogs.

Of course, the aternate view on things is to lift the argument away from purely looking at under-licensing and start to focus on the positives that SAM can deliver to organizations… Research conducted in the UK last year found that organizations were, in fact, over-spending on purchasing and maintaining software by an average of 20 percent.

Maybe the way to get executives serious about managing their software investments is not to accuse them of being ‘pirates’ but instead ‘money wasters’?

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced its latest licensing whistle blowing campaign, taking place in Tampa, Florida. The organization, which is funded by the world’s largest software vendors placed 72 adverts on Tampa radio stations offering rewards of up to $1 million for individuals who reported software piracy.

The scheme, titled “Know it, Report it, Reward it” is expected to lead to a number of Florida-based companies being investigated, with potentially-large penalties for organizations found to be using more software than they are legally entitled to.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that four organization in California have paid a combined total of $350,000 for using unlicensed copies of software from Microsoft and Adobe.

According to the BSA, one organization simply purchased a single copy of an application, then willfully installed it on numerous PCs - in clear breach of the software ‘End User License Agreement’ (EULA).

While the majority of software license infringments are more likely to be down to poor management, rather than deliberate illegal behavior, the case highlights the potentially serious financial consequences of failing to manage software assets effectively.

The companies have 45 days from the day they pay their settlements to provide a certificate indicating all their current programs are licensed. The companies will be subject to compliance inspections in coming years.

Staff who have lost their jobs are reporting their former bosses for using unlicensed software. That, at least, is the claim of the Business Software Alliance, which says it receives around 100 leads every week from whistle blowers - this is in addition to their own research and raids.

The BSA claims that the number of tip-offs it received rose by 8% in January and February 2009, compared with last year.

“With the financial crisis in full swing, ex-employees recently made redundant might be attracted by the financial incentive to report their former employers for using illegal software practices,” said Julian Swan, director forcompliance marketing EMEA at the BSA.