Given that it doesn't appear you've actually read my replies, I think we'll leave your foolishness to the judgment of others.

All I was debating was the issue of physical raids, which you brought up. Nothing else. I was not in any way defending overall BSA tactics.

You argued the raid point and whiffed mightily, so changing the debate to a topic about which I made no reference to in my prior comments is a waste of time.

Right, but the difference between you and me is apparently that I actually read the articles.

The fox news story you cite is about a guy who received a *letter* from the BSA informing him that he was not properly licensing his software. He later admits he had shoddy book and record keeping.

No one showed up at his door, no one demanded to be let inside, and no one got anywhere near his property or computers.

I'm not saying the BSA's tactics with respect to settlement payments are to be applauded, but sending a legal notice to a company that has not licensed software correctly (or properly accounted for it), is far, far outside the definition of a "raid."

So I stopped after the first page, but none of those had anything to do with the OP or the subject at hand. The BSA "raids" were for counterfeiting operations, not companies that were under-licensed or inappropriately licensed.

Raiding a seedy shop in Thailand that's pressing tens of thousands of bootlegged install discs for Windows and Office 2007 is not the same as sending a letter to a business asking that they account for their 20-seat installation license.

I work for a mid-size business and we were audited by Adobe last year. We basically had to send them a list of all the apps we had installed, reconciled as best we could with license keys. That was it.

Now, if someone's dumbass IT department is using the same single-license retail key to install hundreds of copies of Office on the company's computers, then yeah, you're going to get some serious legal action. But nobody kicks down doors.

Eh? How do things work there down under?

Software audits don't entail some government henchman knocking on your door at random and demanding to see what's inside. Audits in the U.S. are usually for companies licensing large volumes of software for multiple users. The agreements they enter into allow the software maker (Micosoft, Adobe, etc.) to ask for and recieve an accounting of installed copies of software to make sure you're paying for what you are using or are otherwise properly licensed.

They don't just show up and kick down your door.

Kudos to you for going the free software route, but most software audits are not the jackbooted RIAA/MPAA criminal issues of pirating -- the companies licensing legit software know what they're getting into when they sign the deals, and some can expect to at some point to have the auditing clause invoked.

It's not a matter of getting custom quotes -- they just want to know what you're intended use is going to be. The price tiers (I believe) remain the same. It's a basic check to try to limit malicious users who would spawn thousands of instances for spam or other nefarious purposes.

Parent is spam link.

Um, no. If you're on a public street, it's fair game. What you're thinking of only applies to using someone's likeness or celebrity without consent to imply that a specific person is endorsing a product. You don't think that every local news station in the US has to compensate people milling about in the background of their news video, do you? If you're on public property you can take whatever pictures you want and commercialize them in nearly any fashion.