"Educational Institutions" - Software Audit Liability for Schools, Colleges and Universities, by G.C. Hutson, CEO for Sadien, Inc.

[G.C. Hutson]

Related Video:
http://seriousgames.ning.com/video/educational-institutions
http://www.sadien.com/video.html

Schools, colleges, and institutions are extremely vulnerable to software license audits and lawsuits because they have elements working against them, that most organizations don't have to manage.

It simply takes one disgruntled student or faculty member to make a call to the Business Software Alliance, the SIIA or in-house legal department with a big software company to spark an adversarial software license audit.

The claims do not need to be valid or based in reality for an auditing group to inquire about your license status. In fact, many accusations filed by students and faculty are done out of spite, and reported anonymously.

Most disgruntled students and staff would make a report out of spite. To encourage such reporting, the Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) offers a $1,000,000 reward to disgruntled/terminated persons who make claims.

The only way to know that you are compliant, is to conduct certified, internal audits on a regular basis.

Sadien, Inc. is a consulting group that specializes in software management, software compliance, software piracy, compliance auditing, intellectual property, Sarbanes-Oxley and various other operational protocols. Sadien is not a law firm, rather a consulting group dedicated to helping their clients better utilize software management practices and avoid compliance liability issues. Sadien has decades of combined experience in technology, software and intellectual property.

To learn more, visit us at www.Sadien.com

[AC]

This is very interesting. To be fair though a lot of arrogant public sector institutions have it coming.

Hypothetically speaking what would you need to do to hit the $1,000,000 jackpot ?

[G.C. Hutson]

Typically, it's around 10% of the recovery. BSA recoveries typically run from $50,000 to $500,000.

Theoretically, to be paid $1,000,000, one would have to turn in an organization with $10,000,000+ in liability... not impossible, but unlikely.

Again, this is all subjective, and hypothetical.

The "jackpot" is used to strike fear into the heart of employers. The idea that someone you fire, could walk out the front door, and get paid to turn you in is fairly scary.

Most recently-fired-employees would turn in an ex-employer out of spite. The fact that they can get some money out of it, is icing on the cake.

[Cindy Fallsen]

The more that schools are able to go toward Internet Satellite open source software, the less this will be an issue. I know that Oregon State has a great open source lab with a Contact Center for educational institutions. I think this would be worth looking into.