Ask yourself: If you could get your boss in big trouble and get compensated to do it, would you? OK, dumb question.
With the remaining days of 2009 dwindling down, something called the Business Software Alliance has come up with a way to make the New Year a happy one for a lot of employees. The BSA has announced that, for a limited end-of-year period, it will pay $32,000 to employees who rat out their bosses for using pirated software.
The BSA is an alliance of about 80 software makers, including Microsoft, Apple and Adobe, that keeps a watchful eye on companies that use pirated software. And when investigatory approaches don’t work, BSA turns to straight bribery, er, uh, rewards.
Now, the bad news is that if you were thinking about turning in Mr./Ms. Meanie who occupies the corner office, BSA’s latest program is limited to employees in the London area. The program has been offered in the United States — and was “successful,” according to BSA — but now the organization is setting its sights strictly on overseas targets.
The alliance says it’s fully justified in placing the bounty because about 41% of all business software is in the pirated category.
Good thing you’re in the other 59%, right? Right?
