The BSA is a private body funded by the big software houses to look after the said software houses’ interests. They of course have a huge interest that piracy is curbed, because this means a direct contribution to their respective bottom lines.

The BSA claims that Microsoft estimates that for every $1 spent on production of the software, $9 worth of revenue is generated within the local economy in which it distributes. The BSA also claims that if software piracy is reduced by 10%, an additional 1200 jobs can be created within the IT sector, R6 billion in economic growth and R480million in tax revenues. The BSA also calls software piracy “dangerous” which sounds quite alarmist to br!ghtshark.

To combat piracy, the BSA has now started a campaign in which employees can report software piracy to the BSA. If the business is found “guilty” of software piracy, the whistle-blower can receive a reward. The reward is basically paid for from the software licensing fees generated from the tip-off – in general when the BSA engages with a business on software piracy they will put pressure on the business to become legal first, with the purchasing of legitimate software licenses. To the skeptical ear this does sound a little like a kind of blackmail, but be that as it may. The whistleblower will then receive 10% of the software licensing fees generated from the tip-off, up to a maximum of R100 000.

That being said, one would have to look at the actual cost of software licensing and the social cost of blowing the whistle on South African employers to the benefit of international or foreign entities. The whistle blower could very easily find himself without a bonus, or even worse, an employer if the cost of the software comes to a very large amount. In the current rocky financial times, this rings even more true.

So, what could one do to go the legal on the software without going illegal in a different manner and following the Somali’s example by turning into a different type of pirate to finance all of the licensing? One manner is to join the ranks of global giants such as Google, YouTube and Yahoo. Globally governments are also cottoning on and the governments of Australia, New Zealand and even South Africa are switching from retail software to Open Source software.

Open Source Software is software available for free, usually downloadable and is collaborative piece of software (ie, developed by collaborative contributors from all over the world). A full description of Open Source Software can be read (here) on Wikipedia, which in itself is an excellent example of an open source solution at work. If you don’t want to kill your broadband limits (or data cap), you can also get copies of the software from Freedom Toasters located nationwide (a Shuttleworth initiative).

There is practically a piece of Open Source Software to replace any of your current (un)licensed pieces of software. The most well-known pieces of Open Source Software are OpenOffice (a word processing suite, competing with Microsoft Office), Thunderbird or Gmail (email clients, competing with Microsoft Outlook) and Linux (an operating system, competing with Microsoft Windows).

Give it a try – tons of others have and have saved a bundle (of BSA-related-stress and $$) in the process.

Most people are vaguely familiar with the concept that the successful party is entitled to “costs”, or to get some back back for the legal fees he has incurred. The problem comes in with those “costs” are…

This whole thing of costs can be quite confusing, so let’s start with the basics… (warning, this discussion is going to get quite technical!)….

In essence, you will be paying your attorney a professional fee for his work, just as you would do with your doctor. There are more than one basis on which these fees can be calculated:

*you can have a normal fee agreement (normally Rxx/hr), where the attorney will charge you for every minute he spends working on your file (most attorneys bill in increments of 6 minutes, or 1/10th of an hour, the reasoning behind this is that, even if a phone call only lasts 4 minutes, it does also take time to get the phone number and dial the number, etc)

* you can have come to a contingency fee arrangement with your attorney, where the attorney only charges you if your case is successful (doesn’t happen all that often since you do really need a very very strong case to make it worthwhile for the attorney and the law caps the potential fee for the attorney to double his normal fee, which is results in it being quite a risky situation for the attorney).

* no agreement – this is not very common but sometimes attorneys do forget to enter into a fee agreement with a client, which then means that the attorney can only charge up to a maximum of the prescribed court rates (see what the court rates are, later).

The above fees, are what I would call, PAYABLE FEES, and will be the amount that you will receive on your account from your attorney every month (he should be sending you a bill every month, although I know that this is not always the case in practice… if you don’t receive accounts regularly, it is considered by the Law Society as unprofessional conduct and you can complain at the law society) .

Payable fees remain payable to your attorney, whether you win or lose.

This brings us to RECOVERABLE FEES. This baby is the big one, and is the one which trips most people up…

The general costs which the court awards a winner are the party/party costs, which is the least “lucrative” scale of costs which can be awarded to the winner. In essence, the winner can claim back the costs from the loser for everything which his attorney did to “take the case further”. So, drafting and issuing a summons is taking the matter further, but your attorney phoning you to tell you that the summons has been served is not “taking the matter further” and although he will charge you for that call, the loser will not have to pay you back for that call.

If your attorney asks the court for a special costs order such as attorney/client, you will be able to claim those feedback calls or letters back from the loser. Attorney/own-client is an outdated extension of attorney/client, whereby more leeway was sometimes given in which of those feedback calls can be claimed back from the loser.

De bonis properiis is a special order which a court will grant against the loser and his attorney, where the attorney and/or his client will have to foot the bill. This is for situations where attorneys have made a mess of acase and have caused costly delays, etc.

So, that deals with the subject matter of what you can claim from the loser, but not yet, how much you can claim. In essence, even if you are entitled to get back the costs for the summons or warrant or day in court, it doesn’t mean that you’ll get the same moola for the summons back from the loser as what that summons cost you initially – you can’t rent a bentley-lawyer and get back bentley-supporting-tariffs back from the defendant, since the monetary amount for the summons is provided for in a list of tariffs.

There are various tariff lists which are applicable over various courts (magistrates courts, high courts, appeal courts, etc) and some of the tariffs also distinguish between different claims (value of the claim influences the amount claimable for the summons, etc).

A good example would be a normal summons issued from the Magistrate’s Court: if a normal attorney (associate, not partner or candidate attorney) would draft this summons for you, it would take around 30 minutes for a simple claim, which equates to something in the region of R500. If your claim falls within the highest possible tariff, you’ll only be able to get R277 back from the loser for the summons, although you had to pay R500+ for the summons to be drafted.

The difference between the R500 and the R277, is basically the self-payment gap – which is quite similar to the difference between what your doctor charges you for a consultation and what your medical aid pays out to you.

The tariffs have been updated back in 2004 and the gap between what attorneys charge and what is recoverable is by now quite large.

The famous saying that “The law is open to all, just like the Ritz hotel” is as valid today as ever.

>>>>> For a graphical representation of the legal costs structure, click here.