The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has begun an international clampdown against people selling illegitimate software online.

Firms offering allegedly pirated software to unsuspecting punters in the US, UK, Austria, and Germany have been sued as part of the BSA's wider fight against software piracy.

The defendant in the US case is a Pennsylvania-based online reseller operating 20 websites offering copies of Adobe, McAfee, Microsoft, and Symantec software. The UK defendant sold copies of Autodesk software. In Germany, the three identified websites were offering Adobe products. In two of these cases preliminary injunctions were served but in a third, court papers were issued in Germany, but the operator's headquarters was found to be located in Austria, where a complaint has since been filed.

In all five cases, the BSA was alerted to allegedly illegal activity via complaints from disgruntled consumers who received counterfeit or poor-quality products after responding to low-price offers.

A spokeswoman for the BSA explained that both regular websites and auction sites are been targeted by the enforcement action. The organisation is not naming any of the defendants in the clampdown in order to respect the legal process in each of the countries involved, she added. ®