Avigilon, Is This Ethical?

Published Jul 19, 2013 04:00 AM
PUBLIC - This article does not require an IPVM subscription. Feel free to share.

An Avigilon executive has confirmed that an Avigilon employee has illicitly obtained copyrighted IPVM information, advertised the illicit redistribution of that information and used it in a promotion for Avigilon.

Here is the message / advertisement posted on LinkedIn: 

This cites our recent report: Testing Avigilon Integrated IR

The poster is an Avigilon employee:

Avigilon's Excuses

Avigilon deflected responsibility, with Executive Vice President Keith Marett emphasizing that:

"With the size of company we are and the amount of new employees joining us, it's tough for us to keep tabs on everyone."

Marett claims that their employee obtained a copy from an integrator after first falsely claiming that their employee had an IPVM account. Specifically, the source Avigilon finally claimed was:

"A PDF download of the article from a local integrator"

Marett refused to identify who the integrator was, but emphasized that Avigilon's employee:

"Didn't understand your policies"

Yet the employee's message demonstrated he knew the information was member's only. Moreover, all IPVM PDF downloads have a prominent declaration at the top, saying "Generated for [Member's Name] on [Date] for your Company's internal use." 

Good For Us?

Avigilon's executive went further, claiming that their employee "thought he was doing something good in promoting your review."

However, we cannot fathom why it is good for us to have a manufacturer employee give away our member's only product to sell their own products.

Terminated Avigilon's Access

Given these actions, plus Avigilon's inability to take responsibility, we have terminated Avigilon's access to IPVM.

Avigilon has demanded a refund for their IPVM membership. Despite their clear violations, we are happy to do so.

No Tolerance

IPVM will not tolerate such illicit actions and will protect our copyrighted information and our freedom from being used in promotions.

[UPDATE July 24th: No response or follow up from Avigilon since, except for Avigilon blocking us from following them on Twitter.]

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