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Major Microsoft win against counterfeiters
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 5th February 2008
Bill has good reason to smile: the guys behind 90 percent of Microsoft product piracy are behind bars.
The owner of Taipei-based software distie-stroke-copier Maximus Technology, Huang Jer-sheng, has been sentenced to four years imprisonment in a hearing before a Taiwanese court. His associates have been given sentences ranging from eighteen months to three years.
The company claims that the counterfeiters produced cloned versions of 21 different Microsoft products with an estimated retail worth of $900 million.
David Finn, associate general counsel for worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting at Microsoft – and presumably the owner of the biggest business cards in the industry – said the sentences provide “another stark reminder of the consequences of counterfeiting Microsoft products,” and that the case was a “testament to the strong partnership between local law enforcement authorities and private companies, and shows the impact those partnerships can have in getting counterfeit software off the market and bringing criminal counterfeiters to justice.”
Investigations into the syndicate took place over a period of six years and spanned five continents, and involved local law enforcement as well as the Intellectual Property Crime project at INTERPOL.
Microsoft is clearly hoping that with the counterfeiting ring dissolved sales of their products at a retail level – especially the flagging flagship Vista – will pick up as a result of the hopeful scarcity of cheap pirated options. The case also shows, however, that the anti-piracy systems built into recent Microsoft products – including Windows Genuine Advantage – aren't quite as effective as the company had perhaps hoped.
Have you ever been duped into buying software you later found to be counterfeit? Let us know over in the forums.
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Comments (21)
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who knows what else this Money is feeding
I don't expect this will slow down piracy though. Groups that organise themselves over the internet often collaborate together to break the copyright protection stuff on software, and this is then distributed through p2p channels - so really there is no way of stopping it, it's like cancer for want of a better metaphor, spreads all over with no centralised area. They can take down torrent trackers, but they're always playing catch up. What was that music sharing service that got done? Then they cracked down on limewire and so. Now they're cracking down on torrents. But the demand is there and people will just come up with another way.
Personally I think steam is the best idea, it's all enclosed so it can't be cracked. (Having said that, I've seen servers in the browser claiming to be 'fixed' which means it works for cracked versions). Other copyright protection systems that hinder rather than help just put off customers. I still don't like having to put CDs in the drive.
Good on Microsoft I guess, but maybe they should start looking into why people are stealing their software. I had no problem dropping $199 on my family pack of Leopard (knowing full well that it's identical to the $129 single-user as there's not so much as a serial key for copy protection), and buy software from the small vendors who put out some great work all the time - I've dropped about $100 with Panic for Transmit and Coda, bought both MacHeist bundles for $50 each (plus one other bundle I think a while back), plenty of little cheap speciality apps that simplify things I could already do by hand if I wanted to waste the time, etc. I have NO problem paying for software - it just has to be worth the money.
By means of Government incentives (tax cuts), PCs are becoming much more affordable, and we are seeing a very rapid increase in the number of PCs sold. All serious retailers sell new PCs with an OS preinstalled - be it windows SE, linux, winxp or whatever.
Thusly, what was once seen as and "added cost" - an original OS! - has now become part of the basic expectations of any consumer.
I don't recall the exact figures, but software piracy in Brazil has reduced dramatically, despite the enormous growth in PC sales.
Just to show that sometimes, good policies and good marketing practices go a long way to reduce software piracy.
"The company claims that the counterfeiters produced cloned versions of 21 different Microsoft products with an estimated retail worth of $900 million."
so that's $900 million that MS did not earn because their stuff is to expensive......
but at half (or even a quarter) of the cost, it'd still be a significant figure.
I agree that MS software is expensive, but that's still a heck of a lot of lost revenue.
No two ways about that one, for sure.
My money is on the latter. People who pirate will never buy.
Not picking on you, picking on the statement...
Windows is expensive most say, but it is the thing you look at 99% of the time... compare that to those 300 graphic cards some use just for that 1 game... I really like how HW may cost an arm and a leg, but the thing that makes it actually run must be as cheap as possible
Not a bad price, but Tai prison is not as nice as UK prisons :) I dont think they get sky TV, pool tables, fags and Internet?
If you can't afford a PC, you shouldn't buy one... Pirating isn't an excuse
£60 is a very resonable price for Windows
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=146273
You should point out that as long as your motherboard is defective and under warranty, if you receive a replacement you don't have to purchase a new license. Or, if you are able to find the same exact motherboard to replace damaged one. I posted Microsoft's OEM info in that thread.