Sony BMG, a company known for enforcing its intellectual property rights, is now facing the other end of an Intellectual Property related lawsuit. A report (French) says the complaining company, PointDev, seized some of Sonys assets which revealed that the pirated software appeared on four of their servers.
PointDev, a small software company, mandated a bailiff to raid one of Sony BMGs owned building in January this year. The raid revealed that four of the Sony BMGs owned servers contained the pirated software.
It appears as though the company discovered this when an IT department employee requested assistance for the use of a product called Ideal Migration. When technical support looked into the case, they discovered that the key used to activate the software was a pirated version.
The report continues (Google Translation) as translated by Charles Eddy, a ZeroPaid reader:
“We’re not interested in a friendly agreement. This is not just a question of money, but more importantly of principle,” rages Paul-Henry Agustoni, CEO of PointDev. “The rate of software piracy software in the business world is very high.” According to the Business Software Alliance, an association representing the market’s major publishers, 47 % of programs used in businesses would be illegal in France.
“We’re forced every week to watch and make sure that pirated keys for our software don’t find their way to the Internet. We’re a small company with six employees. Instead of spending time protecting ourselves, we could spend that same time improving our company,” complains Paul-Henry Agustoni.
Questioned about the fact that this is perhaps the act of a single employee, the CEO of PointDev retorts, “I think that piracy is linked to business politics. If an employee has the necessary budget to buy the software he needs, he will do it. But if he doesn’t, he will find alternative means, because the work has to be done one way or another.”
Essentially, the PointDev CEO says that the BSA has said that French Corporations have a software piracy rate of 47%. The CEO also says that piracy may even be a part of Sony’s business policy – if you can’t afford it, pirate it. It is said that Sony was in the process of merging with BMG when the pirating incident occurred.
An additional report (French) (Google Translation) says that the CEO of PointDev wants to make this piracy case an example.
Sony told La Province to not report on the ongoing investigation. Clearly, Sony is not happy that this case was made public at all.
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This sure makes Sony BMG look hypocritical but this really isn’t that surprising. I would be surprised if any large company could be audited and found completely clean of “pirated” software.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA & again… HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
GROUPAMA (a large French insurer) was caught in a $200m PIRACY case where it used “bank secrecy” to ask Police not to investigate its computers…
The fun part of the story is that the (Paris) General Prosecuter found no infraction in this (illegal) agreement!
See the whole story on:
http://remoteanything.com/archives/groupama.pdf
Good for the goose…good for Sony BMG.!
I hope it feels REAL good ..!!
Sony is behind the actual piracy of an open-sourced p2p app (read 2/3 down) http://www.shareazasecurity.be/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1070
I don’t know about this particular product but speaking of say licensing of Microsoft products good luck to figure out what and how many licenses you need for your particular purpose. You need say some server. Go to software dealer and you find several dozen different licenses all cryptic. Good luck to guess. Example:
http://www.costcentral.com/searchresults.php?keywords=System+Center+Essentials&GO=GO – 3 pages of licenses for one product and no explanation whatsoever as if “Software assurance – 20 PCs – EDU – MOLP – Win – Single Language” or “Microsoft Govt Olp Essen Ml Syst Cntr Svr Sa Nl Locl” is self-explanatory for everyone. What are the chances to not become a pirate?
Holy… this story just went viral… O.O
I dont wanna break the news but actually the original report is clearly not speaking of 47% of pirated software at SonyBMG but in corporate environment in France. It would be surprising if such figures would be publicly available of a single corporation. Maybe you want to clearify that before getting sued by SonyBMG…
However it still feels very good
I noted this myself and made the necessary minor edit.
Indeed, its a news. However, there should be a service which can help the product companies to reduce online piracy. Infact, i have been researching on the same subject at my university since past 4 years and its an interesting area too. recently i came across to a site, Piracy Status, who claims that they will monitor online piracy which including finding piracy sources, downloading serials, cracks etc , testing them against your product, put effort to approach piracy servers for software removal and complain the respective departments, organizations or government bodies for the specific issue as your representative. Indeed, its amazing service – you can view the same at http://www.piracystatus.com i.e Piracy Status
FBI Sued In Madonna Case (mentions Sony)
The FBI has been sued under the Freedom of Information Act and the Civil Rights Act in a case involving criminal misconduct by pop singer Madonna.
A copy of the lawsuit is available in text format at: http://www.judiciaryreport.com/fbi.htm