Comment A BSA story from the 1990s (Score 1) 519
I know a company that had this happen back in the 1990s. It went like this: the BSA asked for a meeting and said company directors needed to be present in case they needed to issue legal documents. Before the meeting, everyone runs around like headless chicken auditing systems, finding license documents, wiping unlicensed software Etc. On the day of the meeting, directors are crapping themselves, but the BSA are all smiles. They say something like "I'm sure you've got some unlicensed software, everyone does, it's normal. But what we want to do is to help people become compliant; not prosecute. So we'd recommend you sign up to this plan for £xxxx per year...". The directors bite their hand off, and BSA go away with some cash in their pocket. It's only later that everyone realises they've been shaken down.