Those that like to put the fight against piracy intoaccessible facts and figures might be impressed to see that businesses acrossEMEA have already paid out £6m this year to settle disputes with the Business Software Alliance.
The BSA has seen £435,000 spent by UK companies insettlements and the costs of getting properly licensed in the first half ofthis year.
Overall £2.1m was paid out by guilty firms across EMEA insettlements and £4m was spent getting themselves licensed in the first six months of 2009.
The BSA has consistently pursued a policy of going down alegal route with those that break the law around software licensing andaccepting settlements with those that are prepared top admit wrong doing andget their houses back in order.
“BSA conducts more than 30 legal actions every working dayin EMEA, said Sarah Coombes, senior director of legal affairs for the BSA.
“In the current economic conditions I am concerned that somany businesses continue to flout copyright laws by using unlicensed software,”she added.
Last month the BSA managed to land it’s biggest eversettlement with a German company that was forced to pay out €1.1m in acombination of damages and licensing costs.
There have been some signs that as well as threatening legalaction and highlighting the potential risks of using counterfeit software therealso needs to be a positive approach taken.
Speaking to MicroScope recently, Matt Fisher, director ofmarketing at FrontRange Solutions, talked about the importance of usingsoftware asset management (SAM) tools to help customers not only identify underlicensing but also those incidences where they were paying too much.
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