Sony BMG, a company known for enforcing its intellectual property rights, is now facing the other end of an Intellectual Property related lawsuit.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
A report (French) says the complaining company, PointDev, seized some of Sonys assets which revealed that the pirated software appeared on four of their servers.
PointDev, a small software company, mandated a bailiff to raid one of Sony BMGs owned building in January this year. The raid revealed that four of the Sony BMGs owned servers contained the pirated software.
It appears as though the company discovered this when an IT department employee requested assistance for the use of a product called Ideal Migration. When technical support looked into the case, they discovered that the key used to activate the software was a pirated version.
The report continues (Google Translation) as translated by Charles Eddy, a ZeroPaid reader:
“We’re not interested in a friendly agreement. This is not just a question of money, but more importantly of principle,” rages Paul-Henry Agustoni, CEO of PointDev. “The rate of software piracy software in the business world is very high.” According to the Business Software Alliance, an association representing the market’s major publishers, 47 % of programs used in businesses would be illegal in France.
“We’re forced every week to watch and make sure that pirated keys for our software don’t find their way to the Internet. We’re a small company with six employees. Instead of spending time protecting ourselves, we could spend that same time improving our company,” complains Paul-Henry Agustoni.
Questioned about the fact that this is perhaps the act of a single employee, the CEO of PointDev retorts, “I think that piracy is linked to business politics. If an employee has the necessary budget to buy the software he needs, he will do it. But if he doesn’t, he will find alternative means, because the work has to be done one way or another.”
Essentially, the PointDev CEO says that the BSA has said that French Corporations have a software piracy rate of 47%. The CEO also says that piracy may even be a part of Sony’s business policy – if you can’t afford it, pirate it. It is said that Sony was in the process of merging with BMG when the pirating incident occurred.
An additional report (French) (Google Translation) says that the CEO of PointDev wants to make this piracy case an example.
Sony told La Province to not report on the ongoing investigation. Clearly, Sony is not happy that this case was made public at all.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
