I was just curious as to what sort of liability an employee might bear when knowingly or unknowingly using illegal software which they had no part in installing?
Likewise what sort of liability might an business owner take on if their employees are installing software illegally on their office machines?
Anyone have any specific knowledge of this? I suppose it's our responsibility to report such activities if we know they are going on, but I'd prefer to avoid speculaation (as I can do that on my own). I just thought it might be good to know where we stand on this, I don't think anybody wants to do prison time because their employer was too cheap to purchase the tools.
Our Finance Director holds the company liability for all software licensing within our company. This liability extends to any software installed illegally by employees on company machines.
Zero tolerance to illegal software.
All machines are locked for installation by the IT manager.
The employee does not bear any liability for illegal software being used in an office. It is the employer's responsibility to make sure they own the licenses. The employer is also responsible if employees are using illegal software they've brought in on their own. The computers are company machines, regardless of who's operating them. Like BOTS says, computers should be locked but if not, and you're installing illegal software, you should be fired.
I witnessed a situation where owners were caught (by an IT consultant) using illegal software (installed by some other unscrupulous IT consultant) They contacted the software company quickly, explained, and settled up with the proper fees and paid for future licenses. That was all. They were a lot more careful in the future. Their server crashed and they called a Microsoft IT person in to fix it. When he discovered there was only one license for 15 people he walked off the job and refused to touch anything. It's cheaper for, say, Microsoft to accept payment for 15 licenses and an admission of (sometimes innocently) possessing too few licenses than taking a small firm to court. I've only heard of companies going after very large firms blatantly breaking the law. I seem to remember Autodesk went after a very large firm in DC a long time ago and the fees were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If your company is fairly small, it's likely nothing will happen until they get caught like this other firm did. They'll pay the fees and be done with the matter.
The only scenario I've ever heard of where an employee got in trouble for installing illegal software went like this:
The company (large, non-architecture) was audited by a certain giant software company. Apparently there are multi-license arrangements that have in their user agreements something that allows such an audit. There were unregistered duplicate copies of software found on some computers. The company blamed employees for installing it, but ended up paying fines anyway.
The company subsequently created a document for employees to sign that prohibited employees from installing anything on office computers. They also set up the computers to not allow software installation except by administrators. Some employees managed to get around this security and install things anyway. This was discovered and a few employees were fired over this.
As for employers getting caught: I've read that the overwhelming majority of cases in which any action is taken against small companies are the direct result of present or former employees (disgruntled or uncomfortable with the ethics) reporting their employers.
Jul 2, 04 12:30 am ·
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Illegal software and emplyee liability?
I was just curious as to what sort of liability an employee might bear when knowingly or unknowingly using illegal software which they had no part in installing?
Likewise what sort of liability might an business owner take on if their employees are installing software illegally on their office machines?
Anyone have any specific knowledge of this? I suppose it's our responsibility to report such activities if we know they are going on, but I'd prefer to avoid speculaation (as I can do that on my own). I just thought it might be good to know where we stand on this, I don't think anybody wants to do prison time because their employer was too cheap to purchase the tools.
Our Finance Director holds the company liability for all software licensing within our company. This liability extends to any software installed illegally by employees on company machines.
Zero tolerance to illegal software.
All machines are locked for installation by the IT manager.
The employee does not bear any liability for illegal software being used in an office. It is the employer's responsibility to make sure they own the licenses. The employer is also responsible if employees are using illegal software they've brought in on their own. The computers are company machines, regardless of who's operating them. Like BOTS says, computers should be locked but if not, and you're installing illegal software, you should be fired.
I witnessed a situation where owners were caught (by an IT consultant) using illegal software (installed by some other unscrupulous IT consultant) They contacted the software company quickly, explained, and settled up with the proper fees and paid for future licenses. That was all. They were a lot more careful in the future. Their server crashed and they called a Microsoft IT person in to fix it. When he discovered there was only one license for 15 people he walked off the job and refused to touch anything. It's cheaper for, say, Microsoft to accept payment for 15 licenses and an admission of (sometimes innocently) possessing too few licenses than taking a small firm to court. I've only heard of companies going after very large firms blatantly breaking the law. I seem to remember Autodesk went after a very large firm in DC a long time ago and the fees were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If your company is fairly small, it's likely nothing will happen until they get caught like this other firm did. They'll pay the fees and be done with the matter.
The only scenario I've ever heard of where an employee got in trouble for installing illegal software went like this:
The company (large, non-architecture) was audited by a certain giant software company. Apparently there are multi-license arrangements that have in their user agreements something that allows such an audit. There were unregistered duplicate copies of software found on some computers. The company blamed employees for installing it, but ended up paying fines anyway.
The company subsequently created a document for employees to sign that prohibited employees from installing anything on office computers. They also set up the computers to not allow software installation except by administrators. Some employees managed to get around this security and install things anyway. This was discovered and a few employees were fired over this.
As for employers getting caught: I've read that the overwhelming majority of cases in which any action is taken against small companies are the direct result of present or former employees (disgruntled or uncomfortable with the ethics) reporting their employers.
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