Re: Business Software Alliance

I am admitadely new at this, but I find the BSA to be a bit of an anomily in the law. When they come in you have to prove that you have a license for every copy of the software in use in your office? If Intel came into your office would you have to prove that every chip in your office was licensed? (They have experienced large thefts of chips in the past.) I think not.

Furthermore, this is not like a company who orders a journal and makes copies for distribution because the BSA has no way to tell which are licensed and which are unlicensed copies. It is obvious if an article is copied, but software may have been bought at Office Max by an employee who needed it then and couldn't wait to go through the proper channels - the office may have no record of this licensed software and the BSA has even less information. While in the case of an article the Journal has distribution records, it knows who subscribes and who doesn't.

While my firm is fastidious about these issues, I could not provide the "necessary" documentation for 90% of the software on my personal computer -- I just don't keep stuff like that. The 10% I could prove is just because I put it somewhere I haven't cleaned recently.

The BSA could stare at my personal information, computer screen, harddrive, even search my trash and they would never know if I was a licensed user or not. How can they force these settlements? Does the company have a "duty" to maintain licensing documentation? (not just common sense, a legal duty)

Keith Taber
<keith[_at_]drylaw.com> Received on Fri Jan 07 2000 - 15:24:11 GMT