Company License Issue

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[BB] Rick James

[H]ard Dawg
Joined
Apr 4, 2004
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Anyone ever see a company be fined for not properly using a license for software or an OS? Say you have a license that gives you 5 users access, but you have it installed on 10 and get busted?

If so, how did you/they get caught?
 
Im' just wondering what you'd have to do in order to see something like this happen. Would it be a warning, or a full fledge fine.
 
I was at a fortune 500 that was "tagged" as being out of compliancy.
I think the only reason we were "caught" is because we had actual developers FOR the software we were using on site and working with us.

Basically, all they told us was that we have to get into compliance... there was no real deadline on that, and they worked with us to fix it all up.
(and cheap too)
 
i work for a large enterprise, and a large portion of our population are artists (mac users). they have no concept of licenses (do macs not teach this or something??) and they just share fonts and download fonts any time they like. well, our work earns us a hell of a lot of money, often using fonts that were not purchased. we were audited for compliance by Adobe a few years back, and even tho we were out of compliance, we were able to show that we had a tracking system in place, and were in process of getting it all straightened out (along with purchasine a giant library of adobe fonts). there was millions of dollars in fines at stake.

in the end, we are pretty sure we were tagged due to some disgruntled ex-employee.
 
It happened to one of my wife's relative's architecture/engineering business. They got hit for $150,000 in fines plus having to purchase the correct licenses and having to pay for third party auditors to come in on a quarterly basis for a year. By the time were through it cost the company about $750,000.

It can and does happen. Disguntled employees are common reporters. It is just simply better and cheaper to be in compliance in the first place.

I also have to laugh at Sharaz Jek's story. When I started at my current job the Mac Artist's were horrible about this. Took a bit of pushing (and two of them leaving the company for other reasons) to finally get it resolved. Fonts are one of the biggest challanges though. Most people are not even aware that there are restrictions on fonts.
 
One of my clients friends works for some company (no idea who and i cant remember what they did, i think it was a law firm or a financial something) and they had a 5user license of Quickbooks Enterprise with 19 people using it, probally all at the same time. Some how Intuit caught on and nailed them, sent auditers there. Luckly they only had to purchase a 25user license pack.
 
Usually you are just warned that you are out of compliance and told to purchase additional licenses.
 
-Sean Casey said:
It happened to one of my wife's relative's architecture/engineering business. They got hit for $150,000 in fines plus having to purchase the correct licenses and having to pay for third party auditors to come in on a quarterly basis for a year. By the time were through it cost the company about $750,000.

It can and does happen. Disguntled employees are common reporters. It is just simply better and cheaper to be in compliance in the first place.

I also have to laugh at Sharaz Jek's story. When I started at my current job the Mac Artist's were horrible about this. Took a bit of pushing (and two of them leaving the company for other reasons) to finally get it resolved. Fonts are one of the biggest challanges though. Most people are not even aware that there are restrictions on fonts.
Click to expand...

Fonts a huge one that not a lot of people even think about. I know a few web designers who normally create the site and then have to go back and redo all the fonts. Pain in the ass.
 
You read about this all the time. All it takes is a disgruntled employee to tell the BSA and the game is afoot.



[BB] Rick James;1031004330 said:
Anyone ever see a company be fined for not properly using a license for software or an OS? Say you have a license that gives you 5 users access, but you have it installed on 10 and get busted?

If so, how did you/they get caught?
Click to expand...
 
Also in many cases I think it depends on the type of non-compliance. A simple "We are licensed for 15 but have 16 installed" will probably just require you to purchase an additional license. While I have a feeling a "we have 40 desktops and 40 copies of unlicensed MS Office, I don't have an obligation to pay those people anything" approach will earn a nice hefty fine.
 
I had it happen where I am now (shortly after I started). We were turned in by a former employee (One the major contributors to the problem). The biggest problem with the lawyers and our time. We had to walk around with the lawyers to each PC and show them what was on it (not that they had a clue). Then there was going back through all the invoices to prove we had what we were using. In the end we could not find 1 exchange upgrade license and that was all we had to pay for (besides the legal fees and time).

It was a royal pain in the butt.
 
Sharaz Jek said:
they have no concept of licenses (do macs not teach this or something??) and they just share fonts and download fonts any time they like.
Click to expand...

I LOL'd on that one. Every single Mac user I have ever met is like this.
Like you said, they don't have any concept of copyright, legality, or licensing.


Anyways, to the OP:
This town of 60K or so I live in got a visit from good ol' Microsoft several years ago.
It wasn't for a particular company (like a tipster), they audited most every sizable company in town.

I cannot tell you what the fines were, but there was large fines involved, jobs were lost, companies bankrupt, etc.

Even though the chances of actually getting audited are pretty low, this is one of those "just in case" situations. Heck, this town would have never imagined Microsoft coming around- but they sure did.

MS is still on the honor system for Server products (surprising to me, but it is...) but as long as you bought the licenses and have invoices, etc you should be fine.
Even not activating/registering them (generally what pirates do), you are generally safe if you have some sort of proof you bought them.
The auditors are people- they will work with you a little bit (unless it is pretty obvious you've just stolen 100 copies of Photoshop or whatever).
 
At the last company I worked for, we were about $150,000 off on SQL 2000 licenses. Microsoft knew about this. They were fine that we were working to correct the issue. In the end, we ended up replacing a couple 8 proc servers with much newer dual dual-core servers. We ended up having to many licenses, but we saved $120,000 in doing so. Also, Microsoft has a "True Up" program that has flexibility on your consumption of licensing. Basically you can use what you want, as long as you "True Up" once a year.
 
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