Are you breaking the law? Can you prove you're not?

I just read something scary. An article over at MSNBC dated back on November 26th explains a danger that many small business owners do not even realize they are threatened by until it is too late.

Apparently, Business Software Alliance (BSA), which is the primary copyright-enforcement company for Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., and other big name companies, has been targeting small businesses.

The Associated Press has discovered that in the money made from software violation settlements with North American companies last year, $13 million, the BSA made almost 90% of it from small businesses.

From the MSNBC article:

"It was basically just a lack of knowledge and sloppy record-keeping on my part," said Gaertner, who got a settlement that cost him $40,000.

This is scary to me, it implies that even if I run everything on the up and up and get multiple copies of the program to run it on more than one PC these guys will be intentionally targeting me to see if they can bully me into coughing up a huge sum to save myself a far more costly trip to court to try and prove myself innocent.

That is not right on so many levels. It is hard enough to keep a home business going without having big business strong arming you into coughing up money that you do not owe to them.


source of information - MSNBC