What is Software Piracy?

I was doing some reading on Dice and I noticed a link about being a whistle blower for illegal software being used by companies. The reward can be up to 1 million dollars. I agree that software piracy is wrong. I really dislike the premise of whistle blowing. Companies and individuals need to purchase the software that they are going to use or they need to support the Open Source community by donating money, time or development. I don’t like the idea of IT Consultants or employees preying on companies for software compliance.

Most of the time that I encounter a client who is not software compliant is usually a result of client not understanding the software licensing. The software companies could really help themselves out by stating their licensing in plain English. Pay attention when you install software if it asks for license keys or if the disclaimer says “This software is for home use only”. If the software usage policy is unclear, talk to your IT staff or consultant. If they don’t know, contact a software vendor such as Dell, Insight or CDW. They have software consultants who can tell you for free if you are compliant in the way you are using the software. You may have to pony up some cash for some software but at least you can do it on your terms rather than on some lawyer’s terms.

We must have integrity as business owners and IT consultants. Our clients will notice and our businesses will show the results in profits.

If you need solutions or assistance with your software compliance we would love to help. Here at Sublime Computer Services we make your technology work!

Adam Bell
Owner of Sublime Computer Services
adam@sublimecomp.com
615-942-0850
www.sublimecomp.com


Here is the definition of Software Piracy from www.bsa.org:

Software piracy is the unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted software. This can be done by copying, downloading, sharing, selling, or installing multiple copies onto personal or work computers. What a lot of people don’t realize or don’t think about is that when you purchase software, you are actually purchasing a license to use it, not the actual software. That license is what tells you how many times you can install the software, so it’s important to read it. If you make more copies of the software than the license permits, you are pirating.

Simply put, making or downloading unauthorized copies of software is breaking the law, no matter how many copies or people are involved.

Whether you are casually making a few copies for friends, loaning disks, distributing or downloading pirated software from the Internet, or buying a single software program and then installing it on multiple computers (including personal), you are committing copyright infringement—also known as software piracy.

It doesn’t matter if you are doing it to make money or not — if you or your company is caught copying software, you may be held liable under both civil and criminal law. Civil penalties can be as high as $150,000 per software program infringed. In addition, introducing pirated software into your computing environment can open you up to the risk of damage to your network through defective software or malicious code.