Just when you thought the software piracy game had reached the completely insane mark, the copyright enforcement industry announces new heights of customer service.  I meant to bring this up a while ago, but something inside me kept saying: "It's just a bad dream.  It isn't really true."

Unfortunately, true is the operative word.  You see, not long ago the SIIA raised its software piracy whistleblower reward to a cap of $1,000,000.  Naturally, this amount only appears to be valid in the United States.  You know: One of the countries with the lowest piracy rate in the world?  As I suggest in Modern Pirates, it continues to appear that American businesses - more financially capable of paying ludicrous fines & penalties - are funding the "war on piracy".

But wait: There's more.  SIIA announced that during December of 2006 its heroic auditing teams collected software piracy settlements in the amount of $1,000,000 from eleven (American?) companies.  While this is a far cry from the BSA's "2 Million Dollar Tuesday" campaign of July 2006, it's still a healthy chunk of cash liberated from those scurvy American software piracy wanna be's.

So... Be sure to do your part to help fight the "war on piracy".  Buy more operating systems & software.  Be sure to buy hardware that has been pre-loaded with whatever copyright protected products the hardware provider wants to place on the drives.  Continue to ignore license requirements & limitations.  Don't retain critical product documentation.  And, most importantly, place plenty of shareware on your systems then forget it's there after the license expires.  Finally, terminate plenty of employees who know the details of your tech environment, then be sure to give them the anti piracy toll free numbers on their way out the door.

On the other hand, you could choose to not contribute to the enforcement industry's collective standard of living.  You could properly monitor the entire life cycle of all copyright protected products in your tech environment.  In fact, if you actually begin this proactive asset management process, you will most likely discover (as a majority of businesses will) that your IT costs begin to drop because investments are more carefully planned & monitored.  But then , just maybe your company management enjoys seeing its name in the press associated with software piracy or copyright piracy - not to mention the opportunity to deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars to outside copyright enforcement entities.

By the way - don't plan on getting your hands on that $1,000,000 reward for reporting software piracy any time soon.  According to the SIIA, during 2006, the period where their cap was up to  $200,000, their actual reward delivery averaged $4,618 per settlement to seventeen whistleblowers.  But that is a story for another posting.