China nabs largest pirate software distributor
Mikey 6 comments
Good news for Microsoft on the war on piracy, China has bagged the worlds largest pirate software distributor. Eleven were handed sentences ranging from 1.5 to 6.5 years and are apparently the largest sentences dished out by China for this type of crime.
The pirates had manufactured and sold more than $US2 billion worth of counterfeit Microsoft software, which mainly consisted of Windows Operating systems and Office packages.
With this news in mind, I wonder if it will make any difference to the cost of Microsoft's products?
Treva
Friday 2nd January 2009 | 05:21 PMAs long as my windows xp I bought for $10 doesn't expire I don't care.
...in response to this comment by Treva. Unless the pirates also had their own pirate Authentication server, I think you will be fine :-)
Jim
Friday 2nd January 2009 | 11:40 PMI'm glad to see CN taking IP seriously. Pirating is a problem for the people who worked on a project. That's not to say I agree with the ungodly amounts of money charged for the "licensing" of MS products.
I guess that's where sites like Rusty Lime come in, preaching the good word about alternative programs. I used to have a copy of Office 2000, from a shady source, but I didn't know I could have all the same functionality for free, and legally. Once I found Open Office, that's the only thing I put on my computers. And as a bonus, I can carry it on my jump drive to work.
The Computer Whisperer
Sunday 4th January 2009 | 11:29 AMJim, Open Office... it's just not the same. It looks, acts and feels like a free piece of software.
Jim
Tuesday 6th January 2009 | 06:03 AM...in response to this comment by The Computer Whisperer. I'll agree it isn't exactly the same, but it does work just as well if not better. It also uses the ISO standard .odt file format, which seems to usually leave a smaller file. I also love the built in .pdf converter. Though I do believe the newest Word does .odt, it's tricky to use from what I've read about it.
Haddy
Friday 2nd January 2009 | 09:46 AMSe la vi! It was fun while it lasted :-)