Bitmanagement, the German developer of "BS Contact Geo," a geographic visualization application similar to Google Earth, is suing the U.S. Navy for copyright infringement:
The case centers around "BS Contact Geo," a 3D virtual reality application developed by the German company Bitmanagement. The Navy was enthusiastic about the geographical modeling capabilities of the software and in 2011 and 2012 it agreed to license its use for 38 computers. "Those individual PC-based licenses authorized the Navy to install BS Contact Geo on a total of just 38 computers for the purposes of testing, trial runs, and integration into Navy systems," the software vendor states in the federal claims court complaint (pdf).
After testing the application for a while, both parties started negotiating the licensing of additional computers. However, before any deals were made, the software maker learned that the Navy had already installed it on over 100,000 computers. According to emails Bitmanagement executives received in 2013, the software had been rolled onto at least 558,466 computers on the Navy's network, without their permission.
"Even as it negotiated with Bitmanagement over the proposed large-scale licensing of its product, the Navy was simultaneously copying and installing that software, without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or authorization, on a massive scale," the complaint reads. In addition, the Navy allegedly disabled the software that is supposed to track on how many computers the software is being used. This violation of the terms of service prevents the software vendor from stopping the unauthorized copying.
The software licenses were sold for €800 a copy ($1067.76 at the time, according to the complaint). They multiplied that by the 558,466 computers on which the software was installed to seek damages of over $596.3 million. Also at The Register . Alt PDF link.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @08:51PM
They should have made the software into a game, and given it away.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:24PM
Everything (as an example, what you are specifically referring to) touted as overnight successes are foisted upon you for nefarious reasons.
Organic growth follows well-understood curves.
But more on-topic, it makes you wonder if this would have been settled more quietly had Bitmanagement been a member of the BSA. [bsa.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:52PM
Had the BSA gotten involved, an admiral or two would be sporting cement overshoes.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday July 21 2016, @01:43AM
LETS JAM!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @11:09PM
1) Make it into a game.
2) Give it away.
3) Gather data from the users.
4) Analyze data to learn about military bases and capabilities.
5) Profit or conquer.
(loosely based on a Weibo comment)
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:24PM
You can't simply multiply the number of unlicensed installs by the price ... you either triple it (SEC-style), or count the "lost sales" as two hundred and fifty-seven times the total installed value. Then add lawyers and champagne fees...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:43PM
From a Family Guy episode:
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:34PM
Well at least now we can call them navy pirates
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @11:39PM
Down to the sea in Irony ships.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 21 2016, @12:06AM
That would be privateers, then...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:30PM
558,466 computers on which the software was installed
From wikipedia the navy has
328,194 active duty personnel
Something doesn't add up here.
Now don't go all "but each boat has ten raspberry pi in the control room, set up just like project Artemis" because right off wikipedia again:
430 total ships
So OK each ship has ten, hell, a hundred PC that's still less than a tenth the number of pirated copies.
Honestly my gut level guess is the Chinese who pown all our cyber-BS have stolen the license key and the software is on every Chinese fishing sampan in the Yangtze river or some BS like that.
Alternately every time the Chinese pown our computers and we have to reinstall, and every time we reinstall the software counts it as a new install.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:46PM
They are saying "was installed on" not "is installed on". Computers could have been replaced, though not 70% of them.
There is also the possibility of laptops & desktops for many individuals, on-board computers as well as on-base computers for the same individuals, labs & training rooms, etc.
The discrepancy is still considerable.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday July 21 2016, @08:16PM
The Ernie Ball Corporation [ernieball.com], who manufactures the best guitar strings is now almost completely open-source. They use one or two proprietary apps that have no open source counterparts ever since Microsoft had the BSA raid the company.
Humiliated by the experience, [CEO Sterling] Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly." [cnet.com]
As of 2003 they were running Red Hat as their main OS. They've been Microsoft-free since 2000.
I wish they'd raid the SF mags so I wouldn't be forced to use Word for submissions (Only one or two take RTF or text files, the rest insist on .doc).
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:08PM
You forgot the Porktronic '386s in the warehouse that needed to be installed so they would appear to have been necessary.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday July 21 2016, @08:25PM
That's probably more than a joke. I retired from service to Illinois shortly before Rauner (a worse governor than the two convicted crooks and the incompetent who came before him) took office. Thompson and Edgar were actually good governors, as seen from the inside.
About a year before I retired, it would have been early 2003 the computers we'd used since XP first came out (and had become nearly unusable) were replaced by brand new ones that had sat in a government warehouse since 2007. They'd paid a grand each for them, but by the time they were unboxed you could get a better machine for c-note.
They replaced those with Windows 7 computers six months later.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:13PM
No.
They are krauts, they do not make mistakes.
588,466 is the number that the backdoor built in their software reports, so 588,466 is the number of installations, fullstop.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:38PM
Someone told them to stop using their damaging long-range sonar, so they decided they need a lot of machines to cover 360 million square kilometers of oceans...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:42PM
Toss in NATO. What we use they use right?
And do not forget there are also contractors that work for USN. So again more equipment.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @10:52PM
Classified and Unclassified? When I worked for the Navy I had both.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday July 21 2016, @12:07AM
Addressed by others. I'd add that the Navy has buildings, analysts, and bases on land with plenty of computers each.
The sad part is that a lot of these copies probably went unopened after they were installed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:49PM
This has the potential of being the best naval exercise game ever ... unless you're a marine mammal that resembles a Pokemon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @09:49PM
They should be asking for what the contract was going to be, since they were in negotiations. Then a 'fine' above that, but not (retail * PC). I really doubt the contract would be list price for each PC, and if it was, why negotiate a contract ?
Now if they just went off ad pirated it with no intent to get an enterprise license, then : (retail * PC) x 3.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday July 21 2016, @08:29PM
They should be asking for what the contract was going to be, since they were in negotiations.
SAS, a mainframe statistics program, costs $790 PER SEAT PER YEAR. Lat I looked, Photoshop cost more than the computers it was installed on.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday July 21 2016, @02:57AM
if they had invested money in the development of open source software with the same function as BS Contact Geo, they could have gotten it for a lot less than $600 million and made great software available for everyone. instead, we're going to end up paying some random German software company a fuckload of money and get limited use of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21 2016, @08:01AM
Indeed. So next time be sure to get out there and vote. Politicians can certainly mandate that the navy develop it's own open source tools - if they feel that'll get them more votes come election day.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday July 21 2016, @08:33PM
Sadly, there are many software products that have no open source equivalents. I'd certainly like to see governments use more open source software. Using thousands of copies of Windows and Word for jobs that could be done equally as well with Linux and Oo or Lo is either stupid or criminal.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21 2016, @08:33PM
That would require an astonishing level of competence!
And not just for coming up with it, but making sure they get what they paid for.