The Jig Is Up Think no one knows about those bootlegged disks? The BSA has its eye on you.

It's just another day at the office. You're busy tryingto squeeze some cash flow out of your entrepreneurial dream whenyour assistant interrupts to announce there's a Federal marshalout front with a search warrant. Mistake? No, and your day just gota whole lot busier.

The marshal is accompanied by some guys in suits who claim torepresent the BSA-which sounds vaguely familiar, but Boy Scoutsthey definitely are not. BSA stands for Business Software Alliance,a trade association for the heaviest of software heavies-Microsoft,Adobe, Symantec, Autodesk.

No doubt, you've installed some of their programs on yourhard drives. In fact, BSA probably sent you a letter a while backasking for an insane amount of money because you made too manycopies. Didn't you read your software licensing agreements?Softletter editor Jeffrey Tarter translates the whereforesand whereases roughly as: "You don't own the programs you'bought'; you only get to use them under the conditions setby their different publishers."