AfterDawn: News

BSA talks out about piracy on auction sites

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that in the first six months of 2007 it prevented over 36,000 unauthorized software products from being sold on numerous online auction sites.

The Alliance also said that the retail value of the pirated software that could have been sold on the auction sites came out to over $8 million USD.



"And this is the tip of the iceberg", said John Wolfe, director of internet enforcement at the BSA.

"This represents auctions we have identified as infringing our members' copyrights and taken action to have them closed by the auction site owners. Some auction offers may lead to dozens or even hundreds of purchases of illegal software."

"When buying software on auction sites, people need to be concerned if prices appear too good to be true. Counterfeit copies may not give you the functionality and full benefits of a legal version.

There is also a significant data protection risk in that counterfeit software may be linked to hackers looking to access your network," Wolfe added.

In a separate but related study performed by IDC, the group revealed that over 50% percent of software purchased on auction sites have had malware embedded into the code.

Source:
Pocketlint

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 3 Oct 2007 13:38

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• 10 comments

• mediabob

  50% seems very high. IDC was probably paid by BSA. Are they saying 50% of all software purchased on auction sites? I doubt it.

  3.10.2007 14:11 #1

• BludRayne

  Yeah, 50% sounds like BS to me.

  3.10.2007 14:14 #2

• mediabob

  it is BS. they probably have an * somewhere saying they are excluding a huge set of the data for some retarded reason. People, companies, politicians do this all the time so they can skew data in their favor and their point. It's really misleading.

  3.10.2007 14:30 #3

• duke8888

  Recently the feds have nmade an example out of two housewives who were selling bootleg software on the auction sites they got raided and in their garage there was over $200,000 in copying hardware and lots of Microsoft products, DVD movies and music CD releases. They are be sentencing very soon abd they are asking for 10 years for each. So 50% is very hard to believe they like to inflate these figures to get the feds off their ass to investigate and all it takes is one phone call and the FBI has to look into each call.

  4.10.2007 12:00 #4

• procode

  I personally know a female that was raided by the Police, four computers, and all her of files/CDs/DVDs were taken ..
  
  Because of her officially 'low income', she got 40 hours Community Service, later reduced to 20 because she was a single parent with five children ..
  
  She had the computers replaced the same day they were taken ..
  
  One month later, she was raided again, they took all the copies, and nothing else, nor did she face any further 'punishment' ..
  
  Read what you will onto that M8s .. ;)

  5.10.2007 04:57 #5

• duke8888

  Originally posted by procode: I personally know a female that was raided by the Police, four computers, and all her of files/CDs/DVDs were taken ..
  
  Because of her officially 'low income', she got 40 hours Community Service, later reduced to 20 because she was a single parent with five children ..
  
  She had the computers replaced the same day they were taken ..
  
  One month later, she was raided again, they took all the copies, and nothing else, nor did she face any further 'punishment' ..
  
  Read what you will onto that M8s .. ;)
  It must have been a state charge, I work for the Federal Government in their IS division and it doesn't matter if you have ten kids you still will get federal time 90 days min on federal charges. Here in Pittsburgh we have 4 cases pending Warez sites and people who have downloaded knownly from them they are going to be charged and time will be handed out. Sounds like they were looking for kiddie porn on her system and found nothing as if it was a federal charge the process is very long before she would be charged and they could have a sealed inditment and will be charged in federal court after they look her system over thats why she was raided the second time I bet what was the state and name let me look it up on the system and see.

  5.10.2007 07:10 #6

• morguex

  Originally posted by duke8888: Recently the feds have nmade an example out of two housewives who were selling bootleg software on the auction sites they got raided and in their garage there was over $200,000 in copying hardware and lots of Microsoft products, DVD movies and music CD releases. They are be sentencing very soon abd they are asking for 10 years for each. So 50% is very hard to believe they like to inflate these figures to get the feds off their ass to investigate and all it takes is one phone call and the FBI has to look into each call.
  Selling bootleg software on auction sites? How damm stupid can you be?
  I'm sure if being stupid was a crime these two would hang.
  There have been plently of cases were software manufactures checked auction sites and found their software being sold and called the feds.
  So if your this stupid, you deserve what you get.
  These two housewives are just plain old greedy, along with stupid.
  
  Peace all
  

  Why am I in This percorpse state?

  5.10.2007 09:02 #7

• duke8888

  Originally posted by morguex: Originally posted by duke8888: Recently the feds have nmade an example out of two housewives who were selling bootleg software on the auction sites they got raided and in their garage there was over $200,000 in copying hardware and lots of Microsoft products, DVD movies and music CD releases. They are be sentencing very soon abd they are asking for 10 years for each. So 50% is very hard to believe they like to inflate these figures to get the feds off their ass to investigate and all it takes is one phone call and the FBI has to look into each call.
  Selling bootleg software on auction sites? How damm stupid can you be?
  I'm sure if being stupid was a crime these two would hang.
  There have been plently of cases were software manufactures checked auction sites and found their software being sold and called the feds.
  So if your this stupid, you deserve what you get.
  These two housewives are just plain old greedy, along with stupid.
  
  Peace allWhat happen was buyers who bought the bootlegs called the auction sites and informed them. So to protect themselves from law suits and crimminal charges the yturned in these people to the FBI.

  5.10.2007 09:05 #8

• duke8888

  I remember back in the early 1990's a BBS operator running a system called Rusty & Edies which was located in Cleveland, Ohio was placing every type of commerical program available on the market before copyguard schemes on their site. They were charging $50.00 a year to access it and had over 10,000 members. BSA got wind of it and the local police came in and took all of their systems and in a week they had another system back up and running. They were never fined or charged. If they did that now they would be doing 5 years and fines in excess of $100,000.00. BSA was only starting out and had only a few companies signed on with them. But this case made it for them as protectors of software rights.

  5.10.2007 09:12 #9

• borhan9

  Just informing the public of their report cards. :P

  10.10.2007 13:34 #10