The Jig Is Up Think no one knows about those bootlegged disks? The BSA has its eye on you.
By Mike Hogan
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It's just another day at the office. You're busy tryingto squeeze some cash flow out of your entrepreneurial dream whenyour assistant interrupts to announce there's a Federal marshalout front with a search warrant. Mistake? No, and your day just gota whole lot busier.
The marshal is accompanied by some guys in suits who claim torepresent the BSA-which sounds vaguely familiar, but Boy Scoutsthey definitely are not. BSA stands for Business Software Alliance,a trade association for the heaviest of software heavies-Microsoft,Adobe, Symantec, Autodesk.
No doubt, you've installed some of their programs on yourhard drives. In fact, BSA probably sent you a letter a while backasking for an insane amount of money because you made too manycopies. Didn't you read your software licensing agreements?Softletter editor Jeffrey Tarter translates the whereforesand whereases roughly as: "You don't own the programs you'bought'; you only get to use them under the conditions setby their different publishers."
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