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Software pirates shopped by whistleblowers

PE

More than 40 engineering firms a year reported for illegal usage

More than 40 engineering firms a year are being reported to the Business Software Alliance because they are illegally using leading CAE software, the organisation has said.

The alliance (BSA), which was set up by Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec and Autodesk to combat use of unlicensed software, said 24% of software installed on personal computers in the UK in 2013 was not properly licensed, a drop of three percentage points in five years.

This bucks the global average trend, where the percentage of unlicensed software has increased by seven points in the same time period. The findings were released last month in the BSA Global Software Survey.

BSA runs a whistleblowing system in which concerned parties report the use of pirated software to its website. In June the system led to an engineering design company being forced to pay out more than £30,000 because it had used illegal and unlicensed Autodesk CAD software. West Sussex's Project Options was fined £16,000 and forced to purchase new software licenses worth approximately £17,500 as a result, the BSA said.

The BSA said it had received a confidential report about Project Options' use of Autodesk software from a whistleblower. The commercial value of software piracy in the UK is about £1.2 billion.

Warren Weertman, senior counsel EMEA at the BSA, said that Autodesk was a prime target for software pirates. Sometimes firms were aware they were using illegal software, but at other times not. “There are examples of unintentional piracy,” he told PE.

He added: “We also encounter incidences where there are very deliberate acts of infringement.”

IT managers would sometimes whistleblow if their companies were using unlicensed software to cut costs, Weertman said. “It is also not unheard of for rival engineering firms to report on one another.”

The BSA aims for an amicable settlement to software disputes in the UK, Weertman said. This differed from the situation on the Continent, where it was easier and cheaper to conduct raids against offending companies. Firms in Britain suspected of piracy were asked to audit their software and purchase appropriate licences for their requirements, as well as being fined. They would not be expected to purchase software they did not need, Weertman said. 

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