Remember this, most companies do not intentionally violate software copyright law.
Unless the company has an effective Software Asset Management (SAM) or IT Asset Management (ITAM) program that tracks and reconciles licenses to paid invoices, and monitors the environment, no one knows if it’s guilty or not, except those within the company who have knowingly violated copyright law...and they're not telling. If the company doesn’t know the rules of what constitutes a violation, it doesn’t realize it is in violation, as described in Speaking Out About Unfair Enforcement Actions.
How do companies unknowingly get in trouble with software copyright compliance? Take a deep breath...and click on read more...
- Not tracking and reconciling software licenses to paid invoices
- Not monitoring the environment for authorized and unauthorized installations
- Not purchasing sufficient licenses to cover installations…guesstimating
- Allowing installations without license verification
- Allowing unused applications to remain on computers when the license is transferred
- Leaving remnants of an application on a computer when deinstalling it –Get those .exes.
- Allowing users to download applications from the Web without prior approval
- Not removing previous versions of a given application when installing the new version
- Allowing a user to install an older version of another user’s upgraded application
- Don't forget to breath.
- Employees bringing their own applications to work and installing
- Going over the metering limit without provisions in the agreement
- Breaking up a suite…installing different parts on different computers
- Going over the allowed trial period of an application
- Unknowingly, or knowingly, purchasing counterfeit applications
- Including non-enterprise licensed applications in a build
- Not understanding the various license types such as Freeware
- Not understanding dual licensing such as some Open Source applications carry
- Not obtaining the licenses of applications installed by hardware vendors, registered to your company
- Allowing users to register applications to themselves
- Not receiving licenses from downloaded click wrapped applications
- Not keeping purchase documents for the life cycle of the application…going back to the original purchase before upgrades…this may be more than the seven years that most documents are kept
- Not following the terms of allowable use – read every license
- Not having a simple, understandable policy, and enforcing it.
The list goes on…
This sounds so complicated! It is if a simple step-by-step ITAM or SAM implementation isn’t used to bring order out of chaos. That isn’t to say it is quick and easy. No way! It takes knowledge, time, patience, and perseverance…a passion for the field.
