Posted on 08/21/2003 7:23:21 AM PDT by justlurking
You have no proof he wasn't contacted, or given a chance to respond, but still downplay his crimes. I doubt it was "inadvertant" as you said since one of his own people turned him in. He was wrong, and got busted, period. You sound like freaking Johnny Cochran, is he your hero or something? No, that would be Mr. Ball, wouldn't it.
But, this doesn't mitigate my concerns about the process:
The legal action began with a call to BSA's anti-piracy hotline 1-888 NO PIRACY. BSA filed a complaint for copyright infringement in federal district court in Los Angeles, and the court ordered the unannounced audit of Ernie Ball's computers. The court also entered a temporary restraining order preventing Ernie Ball from deleting software from its computers.
There's nothing in there about contacting him before conducting the uannounced audit. And, they even prevented him from remedying the problem by removing the software in question.
And the BSA admits the tactic in your subsequent quote:
Typically, after an initial investigation of the lead, the BSA contacts the organization reported, although in some cases it pursues a software raid.
So, they don't always contact the organization? Why not? Perhaps because they suspect a massive, willful infringement? If that's the case, the subsequent audit of Ball's computers don't seem to support that suspicion. And that brings us back to the original issue: did the BSA treat him fairly, or did they single him out to set an example? He thinks the latter is the case, and you appear to believe that was a possibility.
This information is consistent with what I've been saying on this thread.
And it's also answers the question I've been asking: if they always contact the person in question before escalating to a court-ordered action. The answer is "No". Given the history of this case, I could apparently pick up the phone and make an anonymous call to the BSA and claim that a competitor is illegally copying software. If I can convince them I'm an employee (or ex-employee), I can shut my competitor down.
BSA offers a self-audit tool for monitoring software licensing compliance
Have you used it? I'm curious about how it works. I might recommend it to our admins.
Good move, glad you are starting to see the value in policing theft. I have used it before myself, simply a disk you put in the drive that scans the system and provides an audit, they may even have network tools now. Good luck with it, and you may even increase productivity with a lot of the games etc you find in the process.
Actually, I do. B2K was kind enough to provide it in this posting. Note there is no mention by the BSA that he was contacted in advance, and a subsequent quote admits they don't always do so.
I doubt it was "inadvertant" as you said since one of his own people turned him in.
It was a disgruntled ex-employee. Are you familiar with the actions of people that have an axe to grind? They don't always make rational accusations.
He was wrong, and got busted, period.
Yes, he made a mistake. Had he been given the opportunity to correct it, I believe he would have done so. Subsequently, he probably wouldn't have turned his IT infrastructure upside down, and would still be a Microsoft customer.
You sound like freaking Johnny Cochran, is he your hero or something? No, that would be Mr. Ball, wouldn't it.
Ah, I see that you are familiar with the Chewbacca defense.
Apparently so. But judges are not infallible: they can only rely on the evidence presented to them.
There are safeguards in place to prevent abuses. Law enforcement officials do have to petition the court in order to perform these kinds of searches. Ball did not lack due process, in my opinion.
But, those safeguards aren't foolproof. There are enough examples of abuses, where people have outright lied about evidence.
However, I agree that there was no lack of due process in this case. I just don't think it was necessary.
So, it actually runs a program on each system? Does it just provide an inventory of the installed programs, or can it somehow determine if an application has a valid license?
Good luck with it, and you may even increase productivity with a lot of the games etc you find in the process.
Actually, my experience is that someone playing games (or surfing the net, or anything else that is legal) is not an issue. If they are meeting their commitments, I don't have any complaints.
In my business, taking a break is usually a necessary requirement. Some people go for a cigarette, some go for a walk. Others play a game on the computer. Multi-player games within the organization is also a good team-building exercise.
The only problem I've ever found with "excessive" game playing on a widespread basis indicated that the users were spending a lot of time waiting on a mainframe system. After we identified the cause, upgrading the system and adding a second smaller one solved the real problem.
Are you this antagonistic face-to-face? If so, is it really productive, or do most people just dismiss you? If not, why do you think it's acceptable here? Because you can be anonymous?
The absence of that fact in the article does not constitute proof that it didn't happen.
Nor does it constitute proof that it did. You really have to learn that you can't have it both ways.
It depends on the evidence from the ex-employee which prompted the investigation in the first place. We simply don't know the content of that evidence. And speculating on it is useless.
The owner claims it was an anonymous call by someone who claimed to be an ex-employee. If that's true, I really do wonder about the quality of the evidence.
Wouldn't work. You'd be in no position to know that the competitor was using illegal software.
You missed this part:
If I can convince them I'm an employee (or ex-employee), I can shut my competitor down.
Perhaps. But, a lot of open-source software is not vulnerable because they don't support features like Active X. Whether that is good or bad depends on your point of view.
In comparison to Microsoft Windows, much of open source software is relatively new. In another decade or so, we should start to see whether the availability of source code causes open source software to become more secure because the bugs are found and eliminated earlier, rather than being concealed until someone stumbles across them.
I'm assuming that the BSA, by charging Ball for its legal fees and threatening larger fines, prevented the case from coming to court. The problem lies in the BSA being able to demand that its legal fees be paid even before Ball was proven guilty. There is that assumption of guilt again. The key lies in this part here:
But when (the BSA) went to Congress to get their powers, part of what they got is that I automatically have to pay their legal fees from day one. That's why nobody's ever challenged them--they can't afford it.
Do you have reason to believe that this allegation is false? Bad faith? Again, I'm not questioning BSA's right to question Ball's licensing. I'm questioning their tactics.
In order to get a court order, the BSA would have had to provide very credible evidence to a federal judge. If the ex-employee [I'm not going to use the term "disgruntled" -- because that's Ball's lame defense] were the one who was responsible for the mess, it's doubtful that the judge would have permitted the search.
Unless you know the employee better than Ball does, I'll take his word for it. You mentioned employers not acting on your requests to get the appropriate licenses. Did you call in the BSA on them? Unless this ex-employee was a paragon of licensing vitrue and left over Ball's refusal to legally license all of his software, I find it difficult to imagine a scenario that would involve an ex-employee that wasn't disgruntled calling the BSA. And a judge can grant a warrant on the word of a single credible witness.
Ball was not contesting that he had unlicensed software on his server. Indeed, one article claims that his own audit turned up even more software than the BSA did, which suggests that Ball was willing to take steps, once he knew what was wrong, to fix the situation. How that software got there and the details of EULAs would have been what the case would have been about.
Read my previous post. The BSA typically contacts companies before it does an audit. It doesn't just bust down the doors with jackboots.
But in this case, apparently it came very close. That means that the threat is always there.
There are certain inherent costs that are associated with running software. They don't go away simply because you run open source software.
Of course not. But some of them do -- such as licensing costs, the overhead of tracking licenses, upgrade costs, etc. And the risk of being found in non-compliance by the BSA drops. Of course you can argue that it creates some new risks, and I might even agree with you on a few points. But, overall, the benefits can outweigh the risks in many cases.
There is some evidence that maintenance and administration costs are actually higher with Linux. This isn't the place to discuss that, though, so we'll have to leave that for another thread.
Yes, an absence of administrators able to handle Linux servers can be a problem. But I've seen some pretty non-technical people figure it out.
Not very often, in my experience. Jackson was an aberration.
And this case may or may not have been. Again, it didn't go to court so we'll never know. Ball certainly didn't get his day in court and doesn't feel as if justice was served. And, again, that comes down to having to pay the legal fees of the BSA regardless of guilt. That's not even the "loser pay" system that the UK uses. That's an "accused pays" system and hardly a way to ensure justice.
Ball had a chance to clear his name when the marshals arrived. If there hadn't been any unlicensed software on the machines, he wouldn't be facing a problem.
Someone steals my car. A few weeks later, I spot it driving past your house and show up with the police. Instead of giving you the opportunity to explain the presence of stolen property on your property, I assume you are guilty and demand that you pay me $5,000 and give me my car back OR I will take you to court and you'll have to start out by paying me $35,000 in legal fees. If you can't afford the $35,000 in legal fees, is that your fault? If you pay me the $5,000 to make me go away, despite having not stolen the car (perhaps someone parked it there without your knowledge or perhaps you bought it from someone else under the good-faith assumption that it was their car to sell), would you feel that justice had been served?
Even Ball does not contest that there was software on his servers that was not properly licensed. That's not the question. The questions are of responsibility and magnitude. Ball had no say in the "fine" he paid. He claims it was essentially extored out of him by the BSA.
If you want to switch back to the argument that if he had improperly licensed software, he deserved what he got regardless of his excuses, I'll again point out that this is exactly how the dreaded IRS treats people. Is it legal? Maybe. Do people think it is fair? No. There is a reason why most of the popular tax overhaul proposals circulating of Free Republic list "Eliminates the IRS" as one of the primary goals.
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