Comment by eb0la | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eb0la | Hacker News Reader

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I would like to see how this develops.

One thing is _allowing_ installation by removing DRM/copy protection of the software and a different one is licensing such software.

Looks like the navy first tried the software on their lab / pilot deployment. That will explain they bought 38 licences first.

Then, they wanted to use the software on live systems; but they weren't able to do it. Why? Probably the product activation needed internet access and that's not feasible for a military setting (in the worst case scenario it could be used as an attack vector to gain control of the installation). I am just guessing.

I bet the Navy installed by mistake the 558K copies of the software because someone without the right information copied the files into an image server and...

...well, the rest is in the news now.

> I bet the Navy installed by mistake

I'm a big fan of trying to imagine reasonable possibilities and giving both sides of any story I hear the benefit of the doubt.

But, in this case it's hard for me to think this is a mistake when the Navy's own argument is that it was intentional because they feel they had the right. A mistake like that may actually be defensible in court, and there would likely even be logs on the Navy-public server, not to mention logs of the communication that spread some kind of internal viral download -- half a million installs don't just happen without people talking.

Mistake or not, they are liable. Remember kids, don't just ask: Is this software licensed? If yes, ask then: Is this software licensed enough? Then you can install it.

Absolutely right. But, on the flip side, this may be the situation the contractor wanted. Based only on the info I have, I'd speculate it's possible the contractor knew about the large number of installs and even pushed for that along the way.

According to this short article, the contract they were hoping for was truly enormous. There's certainly incentive for the contractor to let the Navy install as many copies at it wants to use, because the more the Navy wants the software, the higher likelihood of big money. Whether the Navy pays for it first, or gets itself in a bind and ends up on the hook for fees, either way the contractor gets a lot of money.

Sounds like a violation of the DMCA

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