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GRAND RAPIDS - After paying a fine of $73,000, First Telecommunications Corp. is now able to carry on with business as usual, but it will do so with a little more attention to detail.
First Telecommunications was one of several companies this summer to get slapped with a fine from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) to settle claims relating to unlicensed software.
"This is a fairly typical example of a situation you see quite often," said Bob Kruger, vice president of enforcement for the BSA. "This is a good, reputable, wellmanaged company having a problem because they have more copies of software than licenses."
First Telecommunications had unlicensed copies of. Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Symantec software programs installed on company computers. It was required to pay a fee for every missing license.
"It costs so much more to have unlicensed software and get caught than it would to just purchase licenses for the software you have," said Kruger.
"The fine these companies pay does not include the licenses they then have to buy to be compliant - or additional software programs they have to purchase to make sure this doesn't happen again."
In addition...