It is typical of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) to come out with these comments and supposed research (IT piracy costing UK billions).

The BSA makes no attempt to counter mass piracy of this kind in the same way that the Federation Against Software Theft (Fast) does. If the BSA concentrated more on these mass software piracy markets instead of destroying a business because it did not have all the paperwork for those licences, there would be a chance of stopping the pirates.

As a software trade organisation, the BSA should also concentrate its efforts on making licensing simple, instead of letting its members push off complex agreements and licences for sometimes simple off-the-shelf products, creating an administrative nightmare for IT departments and a waste of precious resource.

Ben Rattigan