Stories about: Business Software Alliance

Should European governments favor open-source software when they hold tenders for public contracts? Economists and policy makers appear to think so but industry giants including Microsoft argue that this would be discriminatory and are considering legal action to prevent this from happening.

Two digital rights advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret international treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws.

Proprietary software vendors, movie companies and the music industry aren't the only businesses that don't like pirates stealing, copying and reselling their CDs and DVDs.

Ever since we learned that the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft doesn't take into account open source software when it comes up with its annual piracy statistics, we stopped reporting their numbers. When you only look at proprietary shipments, you miss a great piece of the puzzle. We just don't know how big a piece it is.

A 31-year-old Pennsylvania man who allegedly ran a home-based online business selling pirated copies of software, music and movies was arrested Friday following an undercover operation by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) trade groups.

Political naivety and national protectionism were blamed for quashing the latest attempt to forge a single patent regime for the European Union, according to members of Europe's business community.

A U.S. judge has sentenced the owner of a Web site selling pirated software to six years in prison and ordered him to pay more than US$4.1 million in restitution, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday.

Software publishers and Socialist Party members are among the groups unhappy with the new French copyright law that took effect Friday. French Net surfers could now go to prison for downloading copyright music files without authorization, while companies such as Apple Computer, which make or use DRM (digital rights management) technology to protect music downloads, may have to provide details of the system to their competitors in the interests of interoperability.

Open-source software developers are second only to corporations in voicing opinions in a consultation process about the future of Europe's patent regime, the European Commission said Wednesday.

The "near automatic" injunctions that judges issue when a company is found to be infringing a patent hurt innovation, tech organizations are arguing as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a high-profile patent case.

Opponents of attempts to allow software to be patented in the European Union warned Monday that new consultations on an E.U.-wide general patent could be used to reintroduce software patents through the back door.