Queensland’s Wulguru Steel fined $17.5k for Autodesk piracy

BSA | The Software Alliance has settled a software copyright breach out of court with Townsville, Queensland based steel fabrication company Wulguru Steel after it emerged that the company used unlicensed copies of Autodesk AutoCAD software.

Wulguru Steel paid $17,500 in damages and must buy software licences for its future software deployments.

According to BSA Australia committee chair, Clayton Noble, businesses risk the “security and integrity” of their computer systems if they use unlicensed software.

“Software asset management [SAM] checks, undertaken as part of regular IT audits, will ensure that your business can avoid the pitfalls of using unlicensed software and get the best return on investment from software license purchases,” he said in a statement.

In July 2014, BSA | The Software Alliance settled a software copyright breach case out of court with a Melbourne-based recruitment firm that used unlicensed copies of Office 2007 Enterprise.

The company paid $11,190 in damages and had to purchase software licences for its future software deployments.

Almost 60 per cent of IT businesses experienced a data loss following a malware attack on unlicensed software in 2013, according to a global survey by BSA released in June 2014.

The BSA survey is conducted by analyst firm IDC every two years. The latest survey, which looks at the year 2013, was conducted during January to February 2014.

Sixty-four per cent of the 2,000 IT managers who took part in the survey said unauthorised access into the IT system by hackers was a concern, while approximately half would not use unlicensed software in the workplace because of malware threats.

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