BSA jail harmless crippled computer buff

Ironically, BSA was originally formed because the Software Publisher's buttociation (SPA) was going after pirates, often pulling up minor publishers who would appeal to juries, but Microsoft got the lion's share of the settlement (as much as 80%).

I once worked for a company called SoftTronics. The president of the company looked a lot like Col. Sanders of KFC fame. He was a sweet old man who had a small company in Colorado Springs. He sold a shareware product called SoftTerm, which users could download for free, but after a certain number of days, something like 3 months, the software, which worked with the Internet, would send a report of the unregistered use of the software back to SoftTronics.

This of course made it very easy to prove that the code was pirated. It also made it easy to identify pirates. In addition, Microsoft also got software usage reports, and could tell when certain shareware was registered.

The SPA attourney would file a lawsuit, bring in this president, and the Jury would be very sympathetic. Of course, as soon as the judgement was rendered, or the settlement was reached, Microsoft would come in and grab the lion's share of the settlement. In most cases, Microsoft would get as much as 80-90% of the settlement after legal fees..

Ironically, the defendent often didn't pirate Microsoft's software, but couldn't prove that it had been properly licensed.