Companys that use warez or illegal copies of software.

[AmericasTeam]

How many of you work or have worked for a company that used warez or had illegal copies of software in machines owned by them?

Thread inspired by this one.


Personally, I worked for a gaming company ( I won't say which one, but the initials are E and A) and I remember many employees had illegal copies of Photoshop on their systems.

 

[Electric Amish]

Never have.

Part of my job is maintaining licenses for the software my labs use.

 

[minendo]

Everything is 100% legit here unless a user installs something on their own.

 

[Thraxen]

All legit here.

 

[Saulbadguy]

I wish we were all legit. Our IT department is crippled, so we have no authority over what the seperate schools buy. They will buy a single copy of Photoshop then install it on 10 machines without us knowing. Its very frusturating. Since we have 32 schools/buildings under us, this happens alot.

 

[rh71]

Depends how big your company is - there's no policing each and every workstation.

 

[Ranger X]

All legit. We have audits here.

 

[nan0bug]

I worked for a small local internet provider that was using warez for pretty much everything. It was a very profitable company that eventually merged with a local cellular provider. I don't know if they still use warez, but I know they did.

 

[slycat]

another thing a LOT of smaller companies do is buy the damn msdn subscriptions and then
use it throughout the office+/home and in production. if i remember correctly, aren't these things
forbidden for use in production?

 

[Feldenak]

.

 

[MoobyTheGoldenCalf]

I used to work for a company that had the same copy of windows, office and norton installed on about 20 PCs. The boss was a complete dope and didn't think there was anything wrong with buying 1 copy and installing it on multiple PCs. I tried to explain the concept of licensing to him, but he didn't want to hear about it. I should have reported them after I quit...

 

[EagleKeeper]

Been there - filed complaints with management and the S/W piracy group (BSA) to no avail.

It was not until their customer threatened an audit that they stated that they had nothing illegal. That was because they suddenly upgraded all their systems.

 

[mpitts]

My old company was pretty bad about it. I constantly expressed my concern to them about it and it always fell on deaf ears.

Finally, someone got fired and they tipped off the BSA. All of the sudden, it was a huge priority to make sure we were compliant.

 

[Zombie]

nah, we are small but current on all software licenses .

 

[blakeatwork]

My personal business is about 99% legit (I had a copy of Halo that i was playing with)

 

[The Stigenator]

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
Been there - filed complaints with management and the S/W piracy group to no avail.

me too..

two companies i worked for did that.. finally one got around to buying licences.. but effectively later on i noticed only a few new licences..

 

[trmiv]

The company I work for does it. Stupid thing is, I work for a software company that is all concerned about people ripping off our software.

 

[PoPPeR]

i'm self employed and everything is illegal!

actually I've only worked for two places in my life since i'm only 18, and neither uses software in which I know anything about and thus will never be able to tell whether it was pirated. Well, I guess you can't really pirate those things, I bet they come pre-installed on machines when ordered from parent companies and whatnot.

Anyways...

 

[brentman]

It's a shame how much software costs and how much people think that software shouldn't cost them so much. It's almost a retarded circle, but I guess that's what happens when cheap people are in charge of money and don't feel it's necessary to actually own licenses. :-/

<brody>My grandma always said, "brody, why buy the cow when you can get the sex for free?'</brody>

(hope I didn't mess that up too badly)

 

[DrPizza]

All legit in the school... they seem to be pretty up on their copyright stuff, licenses, etc. I wouldn't dare install anything that was copyright protected on my computer... We're already not really supposed to install stuff, but being more savvy than most staff with the computers in their classrooms, at least I update my virus detection files, Windows updates, etc. Technically, I suppose I'm not allowed to install these, but I prefer to have a little more security on my computer than the average computer in this building. Plus, I think the computer technicians consider me competent enough to handle this without screwing up.

 

[axelfox]

I won't say which one, but the initials are E and A

I think I can guess which one

 

[Soybomb]

We try to use free/open source software whenever possible so no to my knowledge everything in the building is legit.

 

[Mark R]

When I was at uni, I was working in one of the labs when the department ran an audit. One of the technicians had to visit every lab and every office and make a list of every piece of software on each machine, together with it licence. They didn't miss anything - they even uninstalled winzip from one of the researches office machine because it wasn't registered.

Back when I was in high school it was a different matter - the computing department staff were delighted when I annouced to them one day that I'd cracked the licence restriction on some software package (I think it was photoshop). I was told that they did in fact have the requisite number of licences, but the software refused to run with the same serial number on 2 machines - a consequance of the automated daily hard-drive wipe and re-image system they had.

 

[SoyBoy004]

Originally posted by: minendo
Everything is 100% legit here unless a user installs something on their own.

I interned one summer at a wireless company and i was in charge of removing illegal software from comapny machines. boy did some hate me...

 

[MacBaine]

Nothing at my company is legit, then again, we're not even really a company... in fact, I don't really even work here... that's what makes it so difficult.