BSA Caught Using Infringing Image For Its 'Snitch' On Your Colleagues Anti-Piracy Campaign
from the hypocrites dept
For many years, we've written about the Business Software Alliance's (BSA) ridiculous snitch program. This is where the organization (which represents a bunch of software companies, but more or less takes its orders from Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and Autodesk) promises to give people large cash rewards for snitching on friends and colleagues who happen to be using unlicensed software. The BSA insists that this is one of their best tools -- which they then use to raid small companies for questionable "audits" that often completely destroy those businesses. The BSA forces those companies to pay huge sums of money -- all of which the BSA keeps. As for the claims of big rewards for snitches, the BSA is incredibly misleading on that front. A few years back, they started promising "up to $1 million" for snitching. In exchange, we promised "up to $1 million" if anyone could show the BSA actually paying out $1 million. Someone looking into the BSA's payments found that the highest they'd paid out to snitches at the time was around $5,000 with many getting less than that. In other words, the BSA has never had much of a reputation for intellectual honesty.The good folks over at TorrentFreak have now also found that the BSA also appears to be a bunch of hypocrites as well. Having launched a new "snitch" campaign on St. Patrick's day, it appears that the organization failed to license the photo of the "pot of gold" it used on Facebook. Yes, that's right, on the very campaign where the BSA is asking people to snitch on unlicensed software, it appears to have used an unlicensed photo. The image appears to have come from CakeCentral.
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Filed Under: copyright, hyprocrites, licensing, photographs, snitch
Companies: bsa
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Re:
BSA members have been caught infringing open-source licenses many times. It seems that they have a kind of one-way view of infringement: "OK for us, not for you". Unfortunately, the government appears to agree with them. While government agents have gone with the BSA on many "raids", never have they raided the BSA.
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Blacklist the BSA
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to extend the privilege of network services to the BSA (unless they have a contractual agreement with you for same). You're not obligated to allow them access to your web servers, your mail servers, or anything else that faces the public Internet. So don't give it to them. Blacklist (or blackhole) and remove them from your view of the Internet.
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Re: Blacklist the BSA
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Re: Re: Blacklist the BSA
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Re: Re: Blacklist the BSA
That may work. However, given that Ernie Ball dumped Microsoft and went with Linux, then suffered a raid that shut down his business for a while, or the other companies that have had BSA show up and complain that their Windows tools wouldn't run on the Linux Servers, or attempt to destroy systems that were running free/open source software because they weren't running Windows, you might have further problems blacklisting the BSA.
The better method would be to outlaw the system of legalized extortion that companies like Prenda and the BSA use.
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Re: Re: Re: Blacklist the BSA
Uh? Didn't they dump Microsoft because of the raid? I think you have your ordering of the events confused here.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Blacklist the BSA
Yes, they did. However, I remember a report from around 2010 about them getting raided again. Can't seem to find it, so maybe it was my imagination, but I seem to remember at the time of reading it, that their CEO complained to the BSA that the whole reason they weren't running Windows was because of the initial raid. I may just be confused.
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Re: Re: Re: Blacklist the BSA
Citation(s), please. Not that I doubt these claims, because they're perfectly consistent with past BSA behavior, but I'd like to have these references handy for possible future conversations.
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Hilarious
Every time they do, they bring up one of two issues, neither of which make them look good. Either they simply don't care about infringement when they do it, or accidental infringement is so easy that even they can't avoid it.
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Re: Hilarious
Every time they do, they bring up one of two issues, neither of which make them look good. Either they simply don't care about infringement when they do it, or accidental infringement is so easy that even they can't avoid it.
I'd vote for the former. They don't care about infringement...they care about their legal extortion, and that is about it. The moment Congress comes in and makes what they do illegal, or the moment that some Judge comes along and beats them up, they will be screaming to everyone that listens about the poor software companies they service, whom without them, those companies would have to go directly after their customers instead and how they are really important to world peace and everyone's livelihood.
The truth is they are hypocrites and legal extortionists who care only about the money they are getting by abusing their customers/former customers with the most obtrusive process they can, especially if the accused has the gall to dump Microsoft and go with a real operating system (i.e. Ernie Ball.)
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Re: Re: Hilarious
Copyright is unnatural. You have to create arbitrary mental barriers against what should be a perfectly natural act. It's no surprise that they copy, everyone does.
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Re: Hilarious
Yes, mistakes happen...though in this case it is not at all apparent what individual made the mistake. Certainly I would not lay such a mistake at the feet of the BSA because to do so would be an attempt to impart to it some sort of culpability for the action of the person who should assume the blame. This would be consistent with the position regularly espoused here decrying secondary liability.
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Re: Re: Hilarious
But they do have culpability for it. Regardless, I am just pointing out that this is a point of hypocrisy for them. If the positions were reversed, the BSA would not be nearly as forgiving and lenient as you are suggesting we should be.
"This would be consistent with the position regularly espoused here decrying secondary liability."
Not even close. This isn't a secondary liability issue. This is a primary liability issue. Just to define things -- secondary liability is when users of your service commit some act that you had nothing to do with. Primary liability is when you yourself, or some contractor/employee/etc that you have responsibility for, do it. This is a case of the BSA itself (or some entity they have responsibility for) doing it.
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do the right thing
I'm not expecting any of that, but it would be the proper, correct, thing to do especially for a an entity (corporation? agency?) that primarily focuses on proper licensing requirements.
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Re: do the right thing
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Re: do the right thing
Maybe the BSA is assuming that the owner of the photo would be as ridiculous as the BSA. Does that photo require CAL's? (Client Access Licenses for each device that accesses the photo?) Or maybe the photo is licensed per server, per cpu, per year?
The BSA might be shocked to find that the owner of the photo might give them quite generous usage rights for a very reasonable fee. Maybe the BSA realizes that it could not withstand such a shock if it were to ask what it would cost to license the photo.
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Re: do the right thing
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The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Of course not. Look who runs it.
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They have done this before
Here is my email with the stock company.
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Dreamstime and for calling this matter to our attention.
The image in question is being used without proper credit line which can make the context a bit confusing. The usage itself - image associated with a message - is allowed and the image seems to have been licensed properly (there is no watermark on the file). However, the credit line is imperative in such cases.
We appreciate you letting us know about this and we will investigate this further.
Best regards,
Carmen Pietraru
QA&Support - Dreamstime
------------------------------------------
Ph: +1 615 771 5611 (US)
carmen@dreamstime.com
www.dreamstime.com
Saturday, October 19, 2013, 10:10:12 AM, you wrote:
New CONTACT message details:
Comments: I would like to make sure that this image: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-girl-lollipop-image1610248
Is being used with proper rights on this particular site: https://www.facebook.com/reportsoftwarepiracy
As I see their page being rather dubious.
Thank you for your time.
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