Richmond, Victoria businesses settle for a total of $31,279
Peter Wilson
Sun
Two British Columbia companies have agreed to pay a total of $31,279 to settle claims that they used unlicensed software on their computers.
The heftiest amount, $18,799, was levied against Richmond’s Brican Systems Corp., which provides marketing and educational tools for chiropractors and optometrists, according to the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft and the Business Software Alliance.
A self-audit at Brican found it had more copies of Adobe, Microsoft and Symantec programs installed on its computers than it had licences to support, said CAAST and the United States-based BSA.
Victoria’s online learning content and applications provider eTraffic Solutions agreed to pay $12,500 after a self-audit found that it was using more copies of Microsoft and Symantec programs on its computers than it had licences for.
These settlements came as part of $250,000 in total fines levied on 11 companies across Canada — nine of them in Ontario and Alberta.
BSA’s senior enforcement attorney David Majors said in an interview that the British Columbia cases are the result of tips received at the CAAST hotline (1-800-263-9700) or online at CAAST.org.
“In the majority of these cases, if we’re going to proceed we will have the CAAST attorneys contact the company and request that they do a self-audit to find what they have installed on their computers and what kind of licenses they own and compare that,” said Majors.
He added that CAAST sees many cases in which the use of the unlicensed software is inadvertent.
“They could grow rapidly and then they just don’t go out and purchase the licences they need,” said Major.
“For example, they would get one copy of a program and install it across the board and they would have new computers coming online all the time.
“But there certainly are cases where it’s not inadvertent.”
The bottom line, said Major, is that a settlement has been reached.
“In these cases, the companies cooperated with us, they’ve done the audit and we’ve come to an agreement.”
Majors said the penalties are negotiated on a case-by-case basis depending on the amount of unlicensed software.
He said 33 per cent of all software installed on corporate computers in Canada is believed to be pirated.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006