UK firm pays biggest ever fine over 'pirate' software
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Keel-hauled An unnamed UK firm has agreed to pay a record fine of Â£250,000 ($498K) for running unlicensed software.â¦
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25 arrested Pirated Microsoft software, estimated by the firm to be worth more than $2bn, has been seized by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Chinese police following a long-running joint operation which began in 2005.â¦
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Scareware tactics backfire on Secure Computer A firm accused of marketing bogus anti-spyware software has paid $1m to settle a lawsuit brought by the US State of Washington.â¦
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Sony BMG has settled with the Federal Trade Commission, agreeing to reimburse consumers up to $150 for damage to the computers caused by the label's use of rootkits to prevent piracy of its discs.
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(InfoWorld) - The Business Software Alliance has collected a record settlement of nearly $3.5 million from an international media firm that was usingÂ unlicensed software, the trade group announced Tuesday. The settlement between BSA and the company, which BSA declined to name for legal reasons, followed a criminal complaint the trade group made on behalf of members Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Avid Technology, and Autodesk. The BSA complaint led to police raids on the company's premises last year, the trade group said. BSA did its own investigation of the company's software licenses and alleged copyright infringement. The settlement with the company requires it to delete all unlicensed software products and purchase the licenses for the software it plans to use. The large penalties were the result of an extended period of unlicensed software use, BSA said. "This situation came about because we relied on a single individual to keep us compliant and manage our software assets across multiple-locations during a period of significant expansion," an unnamed source at the company said in a BSA news release. "The management were shocked at the scale of the situation and recognize that by having software management processes and tools in place this could have been avoided." Software from BSA members was "core to this company's business and yet it failed to manage this vital business asset," Robert Holleyman, BSA's president and CEO, said in a statement. "Sadly it is the BSA's experience that companies undergoing periods of rapid growth, as in this case, can overlook software licensing issues." The settlement cost the company significantly more than if it had managed licensed software, Holleyman added.
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Blog: Entertainment company says vendor breached terms of license agreement.
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(InfoWorld) - A Beijing court has convicted and fined operators of a pirated DVD shop Monday, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) said. The owners of the shop, Beijing Century Hai Hong Trading Co., were found guilty of copyright infringement for selling pirated copies of DVD movies. Judge Song Guang of the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court ordered the company to pay damages of 164,000 yuan ($20,964) to the copyright holders, and to immediately cease sale of all pirated DVDs. The pirated films sold by Beijing Century Hai Hong were all from MPA member companies, but the MPA did not state which members nor name the films involved in the case, in a Tuesday statement. The MPA is the international arm of the Motion Picture Association of America, the American film industry's lobbying group. It is comprised of Hollywood's largest film studios: Buena Vista International; Paramount Pictures; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Twentieth Century Fox International; Sony Pictures Releasing International; Warner Brothers International Theatrical Distribution; and Universal International Films.
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The Business Software Alliance scores a record settlement in a copyright infringement case.
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Retailer agrees to pay compensation to customers in move to end long-running price-fixing saga
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(InfoWorld) - The U.K.'s financial services regulator has levied a heavy fine against the nation's largest building society over a stolen laptop containing confidential customer information. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined Nationwide Building Society Â£980,000 ($1.9 million) for "failing to have effective systems and controls to manage its information security risks," the regulator said in a statement. Nationwide, which has about 11 million customers, did not realize the laptop contained customer information and waited three weeks before starting an investigation, the FSA said. The laptop was stolen from an employee's home during a burglary in August 2006, Nationwide said in a statement. The building society believes the thief was after the laptop itself rather than the information on its hard drive. The data was for marketing purposes and did not contain any PIN numbers, passwords, or account balance information, Nationwide said. Nationwide informed its customers of the problem and no losses were reported, it said. It also commissioned a review of its information security, the FSA said. (A building society is a type of cooperative financial institution, similar to a credit union in the U.S.)
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The Business Software Alliance collects out-of-court settlements from companies that violated copyright rules.
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Software giant contesting order to pay &#36;521 million in patent infringement verdict.
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InfoWorld - The U.K.&#39;s financial services regulator has levied a heavy fine against the nation&#39;s largest building society over a stolen laptop containing confidential customer information.
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The European Commission ruled in March that Microsoft had indulged in anti-competitive behaviour with Windows and set a fine of Â£333mn plus orders to produce a version of Windows without the Media Player within 90 days or face further action.
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iBackups sunk The owner of one of the largest software piracy websites in the US has been handed a record sentence of seven years in prison.â¦
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A California man has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison and ordered to pay $5.4 million in restitution for selling pirated software online.
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The owner of one of the nation's largest Internet software piracy Web sites has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison.  Nathan Peterson, 27, of Los Angeles, sold products copyrighted by companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc.