US Army Caught Pirating Millions Of Dollars In Software
The US Army was caught pirating software in the millions. While it’s understandable with the national debt being so astronomical, it’s still stealing.
The government settled the copyright infringement lawsuit for $50 million after it was mentioned during a presentation with Apptricity employees in attendance that thousands of devices were being used. The reason this raised eyebrows is that, back in 2004, the company had given the US Army a handful of licenses to run its software, but not enough for the number they mentioned.
The software in question was made to track the whereabouts of soldiers and equipment overseas, so the government most likely felt they were doing it for the right reasons. The software was installed on almost 100 servers and over 9,000 devices, clearly more than the government had paid for.
The complaint read, “Apptricity discovered that… the Army had engaged another contractor, Future Research Corporation of Huntsville, Alabama, to reverse engineer a portion of Apptricity’s software application suite and proprietary framework architecture to replace certain infringed intellectual property rather than pay for the license shortfall”
The US Army pirated software meant for only eight servers, and only a few thousand workstations. The government was allegedly attempting to keep the deal covered up, but after it was mentioned in a presentation, Apptricity sued the US Army for pirating its software. The total loss was in the hundreds of millions, but they settled for what was still several times the software company’s own salary.
if the US army is involved in piracy, then its hard to blame common people for indulging in it.
— Jawad Rehman (@jrmemon) November 30, 2013
While the piracy may have been done for noble reasons, the government still stole millions of dollars from a company which didn’t even make that much money normally. Not only that, but it also allegedly tried to cover up the theft.
Apptricity and the government are still on good terms, as the government is still using the software.
Does the US Army’s piracy change the way you feel about government agencies?
