A school district in northern B.C. and a Vancouver property management company have been fined for overuse of software.
The Software Business Alliance (BSA) publicized the fines Monday. The Coast Mountain Board of Education was fined $15,750 for the overuse of Adobe and Corel software, and Unique Real Estate, a Vancouver accommodation and property management company, was fined $20,000 for Adobe and Microsoft programs, according to a BSA spokesman.
Both admitted to under-licensing and voluntarily agreed to pay the fines for the use of software on more computers than it had licensed.
“Coast Mountain Board of Education School District 82 regrets the errors that led to this settlement and strives to enforce software compliance at all levels of the organization,” school district superintendent Nancy Wells said in a press release.
“As good corporate and digital citizens, CMSD82 believes that all individuals and organizations should be paid for their intellectual property, and we will continue to provide education regarding these matters throughout the school district.”
According to the BSA, the organization was alerted to the unauthorized use of multiple iterations of software programs through confidential reports made on its website, www.nopiracy.ca.
The BSA is a global organization that represents the software industry and investigates and prosecutes licensing infractions. Many of the reported violations come from within an organization’s own IT department, BSA compliance marketing director Rodger Correa told Business in Vancouver.
Correa said the BSA could prosecute through the courts in the countries where the infractions occur, but usually doesn’t have to.
“Almost all of our cases are settled out of court,” he said.
Under-licensing is a common form of piracy, the BSA said. Correa said there have been instances where a business or organization has installed software for which it has a single licence on 50 to 60 computers.
Nelson Bennett
@nbennett_biv