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Monday, August 25, 2008

Law - "E-book publisher to pay $50K to settle piracy claim"

Tom Spalding of the Indianapolis Star reports in a story that begins:

Web-based self-publishing specialist Author Solutions of Bloomington has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle claims that it had unlicensed copies of computer software installed on its computers.

The Business Software Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based group that seeks penalties for computer piracy, said today that it settled with the company over the programs from Adobe, Microsoft and Symantec.
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The violations occurred in "one of our companies prior to our ownership," said President and CEO Kevin Weiss, in a statement. Author Solutions agreed to cooperate with the BSA to resolve the matter, he said.

See the complete BSA press release here. Here is a quote:
“BSA’s settlement with Author Solutions illustrates that even a well-managed, reputable company needs to be fully attentive to software licensing requirements,” said Neil MacBride, BSA’s Vice President of Anti-Piracy and General Counsel. “It’s necessary for businesses to purchase licenses for all software installed on their computers. They need to pay as careful attention to their software management as they do to other aspects of their business. The lesson can sometimes be a hard one: it’s cheaper to purchase legal software and invest in software management than get caught by the BSA.”

BSA was alerted to the unlicensed software use by a confidential report made to BSA’s hotline, 1-888 NO PIRACY. Each year, BSA receives nearly 3,000 reports of software piracy to its website, www.nopiracy.com, and hotline. The majority of BSA’s leads come from current or former employees who had information relating to the unlicensed software activity.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 25, 2008 12:54 PM
Posted to General Law Related