Do you work for a business that's pirating software for its own internal use? If so, you could be in for a windfall if you report it to the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in time. The BSA announced today that they are increasing their reward ceiling for accurate piracy reports to a big, fat $1,000,000. The increased reward amount is a special promotion which will be accompanied by radio and online ad campaigns; it will expire after October. After that, the reward returns to its regularly scheduled payload of $200,000.

Why the big bucks? The BSA believes that $1,000,000 might make even the most timid person don the daring cape of the whistleblower. "Businesses often have a million excuses for having unlicensed software on office computers. BSA is now offering up to a million dollars for employees who turn them in," said Jenny Blank, director of enforcement for BSA, in a statement.

Potential whistleblowers are often quiet for fear that they could not only lose their jobs but also get a reputation as a "snitch," making it difficult to find employment later. Now thanks to the BSA, some whistleblowers could trade in their jobs at piratical businesses for varying shots at a big jackpot. The only catch: you need to be aware of some serious piracy goin' down to qualify for the big payouts.



BSA's reward guidelines (Source: BSA)



The reward one can qualify for is determined by the size of the settlement paid by the company pirating software, or the size of awarded damages in the instance of a dispute heading into court. To qualify for the $1 million, you'll need a settlement of more than $15 million.

The BSA also revealed that since 2005, when their rewards program was launched, nearly $22 million has been generated via settlements with businesses who were accused of pirating software. Based on that number, we don't think the BSA has ever paid out anything close to $1 million to a single whistleblower before, but the BSA has not returned our queries on this matter. Nevertheless, with $22 million in settlements so far, the BSA is looking for a major boost with this program, since the requisite $15 million settlement would nearly double their take to date.

Big rewards for big, scary numbers

According to a study conducted by the International Data Corps (IDC) and cited by the BSA, the software industry lost $7.3 billion last year to piracy. We criticized the IDC findings when they were released last year because they are based on questionable calculations and seat-of-your-pants methodologies that desperately try to assign dollar amounts to unknown data points. IDC has to guess at how much software is pirated, how much would have been purchased had it not been pirated, and what the relationship of legit sales to pirated installations is. Heck, even IDC has criticized the ways in which their studies are sometimes trumpeted, such as in 2004, when IDC criticized the BSA's rush to talk about total losses.

None of that is to say that piracy doesn't exist or that it doesn't hurt the industry, of course. We simply lament the fact that trumped-up numbers are being used to sway legislators and public opinion on an issue that is considerably complex.

Oh, and before you nefarious types get any ideas, the BSA requires that reports detail illegal software installs ordered by management, so secretly deploying pirated AutoCAD software across your enterprise desktops on your last day at work won't qualify.