Our First Bottom Line: There is an enormous and highly lucrative global copyright enforcement industry that feeds on consumer lethargy and it will continue to feed on our individual bottom lines until we all wake up and take action.

Read on for some serious details on how you set yourself up for that punitive copyright violation audit...

According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, piracy is: 

“the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright”

Wow! Now THAT is incredibly helpful!

In our case, the key phrase in this definition is: “unauthorized use.” Basically, all of your problems with copyright protected products will find their roots in the license agreement. When it comes to copyright, the licenses are considered permissive documents. This means that the copyright holder can—by law—minutely define your use of the product. If you use the product in ANY manner not clearly defined in the license, you will be—technically—guilty of pirating their product. 

How can the copyright protected products industry predict that you—specifically YOU—will violate your license agreements. The answer is not only easy but nicely elegant in its vague complexity.

“You are inevitably pirating copyright protected products because you do not read—nor do you closely follow—the license agreements to which you are legally bound.”                                               Alan L. Plastow                    

Can You Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is? Can I prove the validity of this claim? Actually, I don’t need to. You can prove it yourself. Step out of your office and ask the person who manages corporate software and copyright license compliance to show you the summarized terms and conditions of every license to which your company is bound. 

Please Accept my Apologies – In the next paragraph, I’m going to hit you rather hard, but please set aside your delicate sensibilities for a moment. Realize that the next bit of information reflects the genuine hard-nosed attitude of the copyright enforcement industry auditors. If you cannot calmly and statistically answer these questions, you are in for an enormous level of financial loss when the compliance enforcement “anti-piracy” auditors come calling.

Here's the hard reality: In terms of your copyright compliance assurance program, you don’t have anyone who is either trained or responsible for performing these tasks, do you? Well, that’s okay. Just stroll over to the secure license document storage cabinet and leaf through the documents yourself. Oh, wait… You don’t have your licenses secured in a central location, do you? That’s okay. Just walk around and locate the licenses and read them. You guessed it: The odds are incredibly high that you cannot even FIND many of your license agreements.

Are you even close to being convinced that you could be proven guilty of piracy by even the most clueless legal aid? If not, take the next step in the process: Identify—precisely—where every product is loaded, how it is being used, and who is using it. Still can’t comply? Convinced yet? 

Now, re-read the definition we noted earlier. Apply this question:

“If you are not precisely following the license permissions, can you possibly be fully compliant with that license?”

Our Second Bottom Line:  If you are not completely aware of the wide range of details regarding copyright compliance assurance, you can easily be legally defined as a pirate.  If you are not proactive in your compliance assurance efforts, you will lose an astounding amount of money and a nice chunk of your reputation when the auditors come calling.

Warning: There is significantly more to becoming and remaining compliant with copyright protected product licenses than we have just discussed.

The average license document is highly complex (Gee, do you suppose that was intentional). Very frequently, you will not even receive a copy of the license agreement (Go ahead, just try and comply with THAT one). Even more frequently, license agreements do not clearly define compliance, nor will they detail the audit process. (Gotcha, agian, didn't they?)

At the end of the day, YOU are an easy audit target. YOU can easily be tapped as a software or copyright pirate. Your KIDS can be even more easily targeted. You will not fight the accusations in court because you cannot afford to do so. You will pay whatever fine the auditors demand and you will continue to pay any and all of the 26-100 auditing enforcement groups (some of them more than once) long into the foreseeable future—UNLESS you learn how to prevent these losses.

The Network! shows you how to establish a "wall of due diligence" between you, your company, your good reputation, your kids, and the predatory practices of the software piracy and copyrighted products enforcement industry players. We put YOU in control of the compliance assurance process. YOU will control IT--IT will no longer control you.

Contact The Network for the industry's ONLY vendor-neutral anti-piracy program. Or, if you're in a hurry, follow this link to the original online Proactive Software Compliance Audit Training Program. Don't settle for any program of this sort developed or delivered by, or through, the technology suppliers. Get the only genuinely vendor-neutral program available today--no hidden agendas or products to buy. Just the knowledge you need to succeed.