With the Business Software Alliance (BSA) recently increasing its cash reward from a maximum of $50,000 to $200,000 in the US to anyone reporting a business that pirates software, which in-turn results in a conviction, it is clear that the BSA can be quite severe on any business found involved in software piracy. Based in research studies, 21% of all software in use in the US has been pirated, accounting to $6 billion worth of software anually. World wide software piracy is estimated at over $34 billion anually.
However, while many think that having the original software boxes with discs, licensing certificates and registration documents are sufficient, just having these alone would fail a BSA software audit. What the BSA look for is proof of ownership, which is dated invoices covering all the software with the “Sold To” part stating the company's exact name, according to this RSM McGladrey report. These invoices also need to list the product names along with the version number for each product. Just when some businesses may think they got a good deal on an eBay purchase for software, even from a reputable dealer selling excess inventory on eBay, the BSA will deny the validity of all eBay invoices, with no exceptions.
So while companies may be careful to make backup copies of original software products, it more important that they protect their software receipts with copies and store them carefully, with the duplicates placed in a separate place to protect against the originals.
Finally, businesses should have processes and controls in place to avoid unintentional piracy, such as making sure every new software installation is taken note of, having polices in place on who can purchase and install software and that they have invoices and license agreements to account for every software installation. As smaller businesses tend to be the most susceptible for failing to keep records and unintentionally install software on more machines than what their license agreement covers, small to medium sized businesses tend to have the highest risk of being caught out by the BSA, with settlements running into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
From what I can see, it looks like the purpose of this BSA strategy is to prevent businesses from borrowing discs and boxes from someone else in the event of a BSA software audit to make it appear like they were not using pirated software all along.
Further details on this can be read here on RSM McGladrey. Thanks to RTV71 for letting us know about this news.
