BSA plans blitz on Perth SMEs

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 20 September 2011 15:06

IT Industry - Strategy

The Business Software Alliance is taking aim at small businesses in Perth. The move is set to go national.

OPINION The Business Software Alliance's (BSA) latest campaign is tantamount to inviting SMEs to dob themselves in for failing to comply with software licence requirements.

The BSA has said it will be writing to Perth-based SMEs in the architecture, construction, engineering, creative and automotive industries to invite them to use the organisation's 'software compliance check'. There's no indication that only those businesses known or even suspected of licensing breaches are being contacted, and access to the compliance check is conditional on providing an email address.

While the BSA is entitled to stick up for its members' rights (and it represents some of the big names in the industry, including Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Microsoft and Symantec, as well as more specialised companies such as Quest and Sybase), it doesn't have the best reputation in the general business community thanks to its use of strategies such as paying substantial bounties to aggrieved ex-employees who report the use of unlicensed or under-licensed software.

BSA Australia Co-Chair, Clayton Noble said "Awareness is the first step towards compliance, so we are pleased to offer local businesses an easy-to-use online portal to help them review the legality of their software deployments. Many companies realise how critical software asset management is, yet don't always know how to address it. We're working to empower businesses with a tool to help them review their software licenses and deployments."

Appropriate licensing is important, but wouldn't you feel more comfortable using a software management tool that runs on your own computer rather than on those operated by an organisation that has its own agenda that doesn't reflect your best interests? Your car has a speedometer, but you don't send reports to the police traffic division, do you? (That's not to say that the police don't have our collective interests at heart, only that we aren't expected to self-incriminate.)

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