Businesses have long lived with the possibility that their offices could be entered and searched for evidence that they’re using pirated software - not just by government law enforcement agents, but by a trade group called the Business Software Alliance, which represents the major software and hardware companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, Corel, McAfee, Dell, Intel and several more.
The BSA’s heavy-handed tactics have come under fire many times over the years, with accusations that the organization bullies small companies that lose the paperwork proving their legitimate ownership of software licenses and much criticism of the BSA’s offering of "rewards" to disgruntled employees who report their employers’ non-compliance. There are even attorneys that specialize in defending companies against BSA audits.
That’s bad enough, but it appears you don’t even have to be in business to get raided by a tech company, and you don’t have to be suspected of pirating software, either. It’s hard to believe this really happened in the U.S.A. "Apple Investigators" have done it again - searching the home of a man in San Francisco to look for a lost iPhone prototype. Oh, and they were apparently assisted by the local police (although there have been conflicting statements on that).
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/02/iphone.5.prototype/index.html
Say what? Was this guy suspected of breaking into Apple headquarters and stealing the iPhone? Nope - an Apple employee left in a neighborhood bar. At the most, the guy found abandoned property and picked it up. Has Apple never heard of "finders keepers, losers weepers?" Of course, we don’t know if he ever had it at all, since the Apple employees who searched the house didn’t find anything. They also refused to file a formal report.
The BSA’s heavy-handed tactics have come under fire many times over the years, with accusations that the organization bullies small companies that lose the paperwork proving their legitimate ownership of software licenses and much criticism of the BSA’s offering of "rewards" to disgruntled employees who report their employers’ non-compliance. There are even attorneys that specialize in defending companies against BSA audits.
That’s bad enough, but it appears you don’t even have to be in business to get raided by a tech company, and you don’t have to be suspected of pirating software, either. It’s hard to believe this really happened in the U.S.A. "Apple Investigators" have done it again - searching the home of a man in San Francisco to look for a lost iPhone prototype. Oh, and they were apparently assisted by the local police (although there have been conflicting statements on that).
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/02/iphone.5.prototype/index.html
Say what? Was this guy suspected of breaking into Apple headquarters and stealing the iPhone? Nope - an Apple employee left in a neighborhood bar. At the most, the guy found abandoned property and picked it up. Has Apple never heard of "finders keepers, losers weepers?" Of course, we don’t know if he ever had it at all, since the Apple employees who searched the house didn’t find anything. They also refused to file a formal report.
It’s not clear whether this fellow gave his consent, but the same thing happened last month to someone else, who did consent - thinking all the searchers were police officers. He said if he’d known they were from Apple, he wouldn't have agreed to the search. I don’t know about you, but I think this is downright scary. We already know the big software companies are capable of entering our computers and seeing what we have on our hard drives. But now they’re allowed to physically come into our homes and look around, too? Am I making a big deal out of nothing, or is this over the line? Let me know what you think in the Comments section
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