Citing a lack of action on the part of eBay, both Adobe and Symantec have decided to take action against certain sellers offering pirated software on the auction site.
The lawsuits have been started by the Software & Information Industry Association Auction Litigation Program. This program represents a wide range of companies that counts well know names such as Adobe, Symantec, McAfee, Oracle, Apple, Autodesk, and Borland on its list of members. The job of the SIIA is to monitor a number of websites, and auction sites in particular, to see if their members' products are being sold illegally.
This latest action has identified 9 individuals found to be selling pirated versions of software, including Adobe Photoshop CS3, Symantec pcAnywhere 11.0 Host & Remote, pcAnywhere 10.5 Host & Remote, and Norton Utilities 8.0 for Mac.
Usually companies try to work with eBay to remove the offending items and either ban or take action against individual sellers. SIIA said that any communication with eBay had not resulted in much action. Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of the SIIA's Internet anti-piracy division, said:
We haven't had very much success in getting [Ebay] to work with us � Our goal is to give illegal software sellers a rude awakening so that unsuspecting software buyers and legitimate sellers are protected � For too long, auction sellers have been able to sell pirated software while risking only the removal of their auction.
eBay has yet to make comment on the action being taken.
The lawsuits have been started by the Software & Information Industry Association Auction Litigation Program. This program represents a wide range of companies that counts well know names such as Adobe, Symantec, McAfee, Oracle, Apple, Autodesk, and Borland on its list of members. The job of the SIIA is to monitor a number of websites, and auction sites in particular, to see if their members' products are being sold illegally.
This latest action has identified 9 individuals found to be selling pirated versions of software, including Adobe Photoshop CS3, Symantec pcAnywhere 11.0 Host & Remote, pcAnywhere 10.5 Host & Remote, and Norton Utilities 8.0 for Mac.
Usually companies try to work with eBay to remove the offending items and either ban or take action against individual sellers. SIIA said that any communication with eBay had not resulted in much action. Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of the SIIA's Internet anti-piracy division, said:
We haven't had very much success in getting [Ebay] to work with us � Our goal is to give illegal software sellers a rude awakening so that unsuspecting software buyers and legitimate sellers are protected � For too long, auction sellers have been able to sell pirated software while risking only the removal of their auction.
eBay has yet to make comment on the action being taken.