Sony BMG: user of pirated software?
p2pnet news | Crime:- Sony BMG is these days possibly best known as a member of the Big 4 organised music cartel whose current marketing campaign centres on suing its own customers.
The others are Warner Music, EMI and Vivendi Universal.
However, Sony BMG is being sued by PointDev, a small French software company, for allegedly running ‘pirated’ versions of PointDev’s Ideal Migration software.
And Sony BMG more or less fingered itself for the crime.
A company employee asked PointDev for help in using Ideal Migration, says The Inquirer, quoting La Province.
“When PointDev’s technicians addressed the support request they found that the software had been activated with a stolen authorisation key,” says the story,
“PointDev got a search warrant for court bailiffs to raid a Sony BMG office in January. The raid discovered four Sony BMG servers containing unlicenced copies of PointDev’s software, so the servers were seized as evidence.”
“We are not interested in an amicable settlement,” Zeropaid, quoting a Google translation of the La Province item, has PointDev saying, going on >>>
“It is not just a question of money but more importantly in principle, storm Agustoni Paul-Henry (right), CEO of PointDev. The rate of software piracy in the company is very high. “According to the Business Software Alliance, a association of the major publishers in the market, 47% of programs used in the company would be unlawfully in France …
“We are forced to watch every week if key software pirates are not on the Internet. We are a small company of six employees. Instead of trying to protect us, we could spend this time to develop ourselves,” complains Paul-Henry Agustoni.
Asked if he thought the use of unlicenced software might have been merely the thoughtless act of a single Sony BMG employee, “I think piracy is linked to the policy of a company,” says Paul-Henry, according to The Inquirer.
“If the employee has the necessary funding to buy the software they need, it will. If this is not the case, he will find alternative ways, as the work must be done in one way or another.”
Definitely stay tuned.
The Inquirer – Sony sued for nicking software March 31, 2008
La Province РUne soci̩t̩ vauclusienne attaque le g̩ant Sony, March 19, 2008
Zeropaid – Sony BMG Sued for Software Piracy – Assets Seized, March 29, 2008
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March 31st, 2008 at 11:47 am
Hopefully some parasites at Sony BMG will go down over this and the court will comdemn Sony/BMG to pay a lot of money to PointDev and this money will not be available to harass and extort innocent people.