Software Licensing Audit
20 Jan 2010
The Same offence made on preliminary arrangement by the organised group of persons, or in especially large size, or with use of office position, is punished by imprisonment for the term up to 5 years with the penalty at the rate to 500,000 roubles or at a rate of wages condemned for the period till 3 years (item 3).
And to get under the third point of above-stated article simply enough.
Programmers who establish come to your firm, update, and serve the counterfeit software on your office computers and servers, and do it from your consent and at a fate of your employees? Means, you make an administrative and criminal offence on preliminary arrangement by the organised group of persons.
However, here there is one zatsepka. Criminal case upon illegal use ON can be got only in the event that this “act” has caused to the legal owner a large damage, i.e. More than 50,000 roubles. Especially large it is considered a damage exceeding 250,000 roubles. If the total cost of licences of programs illegally used by you does not exceed fifty thousand, your offence will be classified as administrative, and it involves less rigid consequences.
Article 7,12 of KoAp provides for illegal use of objects of the copyright for the purpose of extraction of the income the penalty at the rate to 400 minimum wage rates «with confiscation of counterfeit copies of products and soundtracks, and also materials and the equipment, used for their reproduction». To lose computers, of course, not so it is unpleasant how to be deprived of freedom, but it is better not to lose in general anything, and it is quite possible if to take corresponding measures.
The first and the most obvious (but, alas, not the cheapest) an exit is to get rid of all piracy software and to get licence versions of products necessary for work.