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Tech

Tech Giants' New Facebook Ads Put a Bounty on Software Pirates' Heads

A campaign from the Business Software Alliance is appealing for informants on Facebook.
One of the BSA's Facebook ads

Irrespective of your opinion on piracy, we can all acknowledge that it's hard to combat.

In a new effort to clamp down, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which represents Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and others, recently launched a Facebook campaign encouraging people to tip them off to those using pirated software in exchange for cash. And according to one of the organisation's representatives, it's already been responsible for a slight decrease in the use of such software, at least in the Czech Republic.

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The Facebook campaign has been running since February of this year, when TorrentFreak picked up on adverts posted by a page called 'No Piracy'. It's geared towards prosecuting offending companies and institutions rather than individuals, and if a tip-off results in a successful case, the informant can expect a reward between $5,000 and $200,000.

Informants fill out an online form, after which the BSA in-house investigative team "will follow up with you as appropriate and begin their investigation of the target company. Based on your information and our investigation, BSA will then pursue the action that we feel is warranted.”

The BSA has used informants to catch businesses using pirated software before—in 2012, they said that 49 percent of all tip-offs were driven by the informant citing 'ethical' reasons. In July of that year they ran a month-long campaign offering $20,000 to staff to turn their company in, and the year before that the alliance offered out packages of $5,000 to informants, which led to them receiving 104 reports, according to IT News.

The idea isn't exclusive to BSA; piracy informants have worked for Hollywood too. Way back in 2003, the Motion Picture Association of America pooled $150,000 together to reward anyone that could provide information about illegal DVD factories in Asia, WIRED reported.

But for the BSA's work on software piracy, focus has recently shifted from IT manager whistleblowers to anyone who happens to see one of the organization's Facebook adverts, in a drive to get more and more tip-offs.

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In these ads, the BSA is already suggesting what would-be informants might want to spend that cash on. “Start saving up for a weekend trip. Report unlicensed business software. Get paid,” reads one of them. “A little cash can help you get to your dream destination,” points out another.

Now, someone connected to the campaign has praised its results. In an interview with Radio Prague, the spokesperson of the BSA's Czech division, Jan Hlaváč, said that the paid informants are an asset worth forking out for.

“The programme has helped a great deal convince companies that the legal risks are not worth it,” he said, and “[the campaign] has been very successful.”

Thirty-four percent of programmes used in the Czech Republic were done so without a licence in 2013, according to the BSA's latest report (PDF). This is part of a gentle downward trend, and Hlaváč feels that the Facebook campaign has played a part in that.

“We did it because we wanted to catch big fish. In the past, many informants did not want to disclose who they were, and it was difficult to set up serious communication with them.”

But now, perhaps with the prospect of a hefty cash reward, informants are increasingly happy to chat. The Czech BSA usually receives around 30 tips a month, not all of them serious or of any consequence. But according to Hlaváč, “The quality of leads has greatly improved, and at the moment, we have in the pipeline cases worth around 10 million crowns (approximately $500,000)."

“Every year, we receive hundreds of tips from our informants about companies that use unlicensed software,” Hlaváč continued. “In many cases, we manage to reach out-of-court settlement but some cases end up in court.”

Similar programmes exist in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, but it has not been disclosed whether these have had an equal effect on their national level of piracy. According to Hlaváč, “the anti-piracy programme in the Czech Republic has been historically very strong,” and that may be another reason, as well as the financial bounty, that people are reporting on companies.

Globally, 43 percent of software installed on PCs is not properly licensed, according to the BSA report, most of which is used in emerging economies. There are phone numbers for informants to use in countries like India, but it is unclear how many people in such areas decide to report their employers, even if 60 percent of all software installations in the country are unlicensed.

Even with the bounty system in place, piracy is going to continue to be a major headache for the companies trying to stamp it out.