I can only offer my experience with BSA at the company I used to work for - a small (65 employees) services firm.
The system administrator was recruited by a start-up rival. Prior to leaving, he loaded machines with copies of software, then he quit and turned in my employer to BSA. BSA's law firm sent a cease and desist/demand letter. Ultimately, despite providing affidavits from other employees that had been recruited and told of the "plan" to turn in my employer, etc., and other evidence, there was little negotiation with BSA. Even worse, BSA's law firm insisted that Microsoft Office Suites be treated as "individual" packages of Word, Excel, Access, etc. They clearly had no concept of licensing or even how software was provided. We had to fax the descriptions from the Microsoft Office web site to them before they could figure it out. We had to translate our invoices for Microsoft Office Professional and Premium into the components i.e. 3 Office Suites equals 3 copies of Word. There were a lot of other issues as well. I can't even tell you how many letters we sent that said we had 5 copies of Professional and 10 copies of Premium and they would say, that's great, but where's your license for 15 copies of Word. It was laughable.
We also had documentation of PC purchases that included the Microsoft Office Suite software, however since the description didn't specifically say "Microsoft Office 2000 Professional" BSA said that was unacceptable as evidence. We couldn't get some of the vendors to send us clarifications of what "software" meant on their invoices, so we got stuck with that as well. Having the original packaging, licenses, etc., from the software itself was unacceptable as far as they were concerned.
We also requested that Microsoft search their records for all registrations of software to the company and we were told it couldn't be done. Another company we requested info from (whose name escapes me) couldn't provide it either. Seems like they were using Digital River for payments, but switched to someone else and couldn't find/access records from prior purchases.
Given the fact that Microsoft has billions and my employer had virtually nothing, they chose not to fight it and to pay the "fine."
Just Another Anonymous Coward
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