Optima, a software company in California has filled a lawsuit against a Californian reseller that sold pirated software. According to the company, they are 'helping' consumers because lots of pirated software should contain viruses and miss key element and buyers of pirated software have no right on support and upgrades.
When only a handful of resellers distribute counterfeit or illegally licensed software, it creates a negative ripple effect that affects the entire community -- other resellers, customers and, ultimately, the economy as a whole,'' said Scott Hess, primary systems consultant at MCSI®, (Nasdaq:MCSI - news; www.mcsinet.com). ``We spend a lot of time discussing software license agreements with company owners and managers, explaining what's legal and why they should stay in compliance with the license agreements. Getting a great deal on software looks great -- until customers realize they've been scammed and that they have no license, no right to use the software and no support.'' |
The 26.7 percent software piracy rate in California means that more than one in four software applications in the state are pirated. According to the International Planning and Research Corp. study conducted for the Business Software Alliance, www.bsa.org. In 1999 software piracy cost the state more than 13,859 jobs and more than $3.463 billion in combined wages, tax revenues and retail sales of business software applications -- demonstrating that software piracy affects not just unfortunate consumers and honest resellers, but all the state's citizens.
The multi-million dollar lawsuit filed by Optima alleges that the defendants violated and/or infringed on Optima Technology's copyright and trademarks and patents, stole its source code and distributed counterfeit and/or infringing copies of Optima software or software components and sold to investigators and/or customers from 1999 to the present.
I think it's nonsense. Everyone that buys Office XP for example for about 10$ knows that it's not legal.
Source: Yahoo.com
