US Military Caught Pirating Software, To Pay $50 Million In Fines

Crime does not pay, and certainly it is a crime to steal something that does not belong to you in the first place. Software piracy is a very big issue that needs to be tackled, and Apptricity, the maker of logistics software that is used to track down the location of soldiers as well as shipments in critical missions, has decided to bring the US Government to court after the defaulted on software license fees. This means that the US military had been running on unlicensed copies of the software, which would be tantamount to piracy – and the kicker is this – it has been going on for nearly 10 years!

Apptricity claims that the US Government had unlawfully installed the software on 93 servers and approximately 9,000 devices, not to mention another 500 licenses which were paid for. The license fees for the software alone stood at $1.35 million for each server, while it should cost $5,000 per device – and taking out our trusty calculators, it would amount to roughly $224 million in lost revenue. The US Government has since decided to settle this lawsuit by handing over $50 million to Apptricity, which the latter accepted. It does seem as though their working relationship is set to continue in the days and years ahead though.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Military
Tags: military