NEWS
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is to receive a record out-of-court settlement from a British company which used unlicensed software.
The record payment - £250,000 - dwarfs previous settlements, which averaged £10,000 last year.
The BSA said in this latest case, announced on Thursday, the company guilty of software-licence infringement is "a major UK firm in the infrastructure and public-services sector". The BSA would not reveal details of who the perpetrator is, saying only that the company "cannot be named for legal reasons".
According to the BSA the £250,000 will be paid by the company in one lump sum.
The company was found to be using unlicensed copies of Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft software on hundreds of PCs across several different sites, the BSA said in a statement.
An investigation into the company began in October 2006. The settlement was agreed in May.
Sarah Coombes, director of legal affairs EMEA at the BSA, said: "The size of the settlement is a reflection of the serious nature and scale of unlicensed software use at this company."
Colin Barker writes for ZDNet UK
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1. anonymous
MS(UK) & BSA are not interested in suppliers, just the users.
I came across an incident where a thrid party organisations 'fix' to a clients not working PC was to install a 'tweaked' copy of a 'known illicit' corporate version.
The result - It wouldn't install some new softwaere and came up with many Russian error messages when I tried to find the problem and fix it.
I then discovered it would not run windowsupdate due to an invalid licence number, and was trying to make other contacts via the web.
Microsoft (UK), and FAST were totally uninterested in details of the 'fixit' organisation, and just wanted details of my already defrauded client.
Considering that attitude of MS(UK) BSA, and FAST, they will have to make do without my assistance.