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.