Sell your boss and company out win $36,000 from the BSA

Quakester2000

May 6, 2006

RTV71 used our news submit to tell us that
Anti-Piracy group the BSA (Business Software Alliance) is offering a reward of
$36,000 if go behind your boss and companies back and report unlicensed or
illegal software. In the UK their is already a hotline you can ring, but for a limited time the reward in the UK has doubled to Â£10,000 ($18,000) till the end of June.

In the last year the BSA started 420 investigations after calls to their hotline service. A regional manager with the BSA said that companies have no excuses anymore if caught with pirate software now that they have so much advice and auditing software available to them.

According to the BSA 27% percent of businesses still use pirate software and believe they can get away with it. A survey by a YouGov poll found that three quarters of staff would likely tip off the BSA if they thought they were being treated poorly by their boss. A quarter of employees indicated that they would sell their boss and company out if they didn't get a good pay rise.

Anti-software piracy group the Business Software Alliance is offering a $36,000 reward to anyone who informs on employers who use illegal or unlicensed software. The BSA already has an online hotline for people to report the use of illegal software within U.K. organizations, but it has now doubled the reward from 10,000 pounds ($18,000) to 20,000 pounds ($36,000) until the end of June this year.

The BSA said it opened 420 investigations in the last year as a result of these hotline tip-offs, the majority of which came from people in IT. Siobhan Carroll, regional manager for Northern Europe at the BSA, told said that with all the software auditing tools and advice available, organizations no longer have any excuse for being caught using illegal software.

She said: "We are doubling the reward to make software licensing a priority for managers. It might seem harsh, but at the end of the day there are 27 percent of businesses who think they can get away with it." Carroll said disgruntled staff members are often the source of tip-offs and a YouGov poll commissioned by the BSA found that three-quarters of workers would consider reporting their company if they felt their boss had treated them unfairly, while a quarter said poor pay raises would also spur them to rat on their employer.

While the BSA may be trying to stop piracy, what about abuse of the service, say an employee is annoyed at their company and decides to plant unlicensed software to get a nice reward out of it.

Source: News.com