Thursday, August 30, 2007

So what is your business' software policy?

Or does your business have one? What about your own personal computer? Are you sure that you have not violated the law? If you have any doubts, take a look at Rise of the armchair thieves - web - Technology - theage.com.au:

"Hew Griffiths, a 44-year-old NSW man is serving a 15-month sentence in a US jail for software piracy. Griffiths had never set foot in the US before he was indicted there. Indeed he had never owned a passport. Yet he was convicted under US law for copyright breaches he committed while in Australia. And the Australian Government agreed to extradite Griffiths to the US to be sentenced and jailed there. Surely Griffiths must have been some sort of software piracy godfather to warrant an international extradition and High Court challenge? Here's a sobering thought: rather than making any money out of his piracy activities, Griffiths cracked security codes on proprietary software and made that software available free on the internet. He wasn't raking in bundles of cash for his activities but he allowed thousands of people to get free software that otherwise would have been protected."