Rewards for content theft
By Ria Sharma

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) describes itself as the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry.  It is tasked with promoting the software as well as digital content of the industry.  SIIA members include tech companies like IBM, Oracle, Red Hat and others.  SIIA also represents a number of publishers including McGraw-Hill, Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis.

While everyone is aware of cash rewards being offered to give anonymous tips about software pirates, the same incentives are now being given to track down people and organizations which steal content like news, articles, books and even web only articles.

Currently,  SIIA only deals with software and content piracy.  It does not cover music, movies and video games.

What are the rewards offered for dobbing in software pirates or people stealing books, articles and photos?

If the eventual settlement (read fine) is upto $100,000, you will be paid upto $5,000.  If the tech company or  publishing houses is awarded compensation of $20 million, the anonymous tipster would receive about 1 million dollars.

How soon before such a reward system would be introduced in India to track down people who steal news articles and photos for other bloggers and websites?