By Alex Scroxton16 December 2008
The Business Software Alliance has settled with two more
firms north of the border in its ongoing pursuit of businesses that continue to
use unlicensed software despite the highly publicised risks.
Mobile phone repair company Total Repair Solutions and motor
dealer John R Weir Ltd are both facing a lean Christmas after paying settlement costs of £20,000 and £24,582 respectively. Additionally, Total Repair has now paid out £100,000 to acquire correctly licenced software.
Renfrewshire-based Total Repair was slammed after allegedly
being under-licensed on Microsoft software, while John R Weir installed
unlicensed copies of Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe software on a number of its
machines.
“The continuing disregard for licensing law is a real cause
for concern. With the economy entering a period of slowdown companies should
make sure they are compliant: no-one wants to face an unexpected bill after
falling foul of the rules or encountering operational difficulties due to
viruses,” said BSA UK County Committee chair, Julie Strawson.
Matt Fisher, director of Centennial products at software asset
management (SAM) specialists FrontRange said it was no surprise that incidents
of unlicensed software use seemed to be on the up.
“It is quite cyclical in the UK; we have a period of soft messaging
followed by a clampdown,” he said.
“It also ties in with the economic situation. Vendors are
not making as much as they would like on licence sales so it’s in their
interest to work in this way,” he added.
In the case of the firms fingered by the BSA this week,
Fisher said that to warrant such big fines there had likely been some obvious
mismanagement, but he added that the granular nature of office networks and the
lack of clear control given to IT admins meant in most cases firms were
unwittingly committing piracy.
The BSA has been concentrating resources on its campaign in Scotland, largely around the Glasgow region, for over a year after
discovering that the area had a huge problem with pirated and unlicensed
software. In 2007, Glasgow Central MP Mohammad Sarwar acknowledged that the
city’s “poor software piracy record threatens [its] economic stability as well
as damaging its reputation” and urged local business to step up their efforts
to prioritise effective asset management.
A recent IDC report suggested that by reducing software
piracy levels in the UK
by just 10% over 13,000 new jobs could be created.
