It should come as no surprise that the Business Software Alliance (BSA) takes software piracy seriously. How seriously, you ask? How about six figure seriously. The industry organization “will continue to offer cash rewards of up to $200,000 for qualifying software piracy reports in the U.S. through December 31, 2006.”

The BSA Rewards Program, which was launched last fall for the first time in the U.S., encourages individuals with detailed information about software piracy in the workplace to come forward and report the infringements. All settlement revenue collected by the BSA is used for educational efforts to counter piracy worldwide.

Since the launch of the Rewards program in the U.S. last year, BSA has received nearly 3,000 leads nationally, mostly from industries in the sales/distribution, software development, engineering, manufacturing, telecommunications and advertising arenas. Other industries that generate software piracy leads included: graphics, internet, media and service industries.

The BSA defines five types of software piracy:

• End user piracy
• Client-server overuse
• Internet piracy
• Hard-disk loading, and
• Software counterfeiting

Report a software pirate, pass go, collect $200G?

[tags]software piracy[/tags]