Report: Microsoft aided $900-million piracy bust
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Would-be pirates, beware: Redmond says its own sleuthing role helped to bring down phony software outfits in 22 countries around the world.
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InfoWorld - The Software &amp; Information Industry Association (SIIA) received more than $1 million for software piracy settlements in December, the group announced Friday.
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SHENZHEN, China  - More than $500 million worth of  pirated software, including counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec  products, has been seized in a long-running joint probe by  Chinese police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation,  officials from both countries said on Tuesday.
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The Business Software Alliance is upping its efforts to track down software piracy in the workplace, increasing potential rewards for reporting copyright infringement to $1 million and kicking off a new "blow the whistle" campaign.
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Microsoft confirms that a pirated copy of Halo 2 for Xbox in the PAL video format and French language started circulating on the Internet this week over newsgroups and piracy sites.
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Microsoft has begun a short-term validation programme aimed at tackling software piracy. Users are invited to have their copies of Windows XP analysed, with the promise that they will be replaced free of charge if found to be counterfeit.
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distribute 100 million copies of Windows XP Service Pack 2 within two months of the critical security update&#39;s release. On Wednesday, Microsoft declared success.
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More PCs run the alternative OS, but many will end up with a pirated version of Windows, report says.
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In its continuing efforts to stop piracy of its software, Microsoft said Tuesday it had filed another twenty lawsuits in nine states. The Redmond company said the lawsuits were filed for various reasons, including the manufacture and distribution of pirated software.
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Is Microsoft's anti-malware giveaway part of a master plan to flush out software pirates?
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(InfoWorld) - Continuing itsÂ worldwide assault on software piracy, Microsoft has filed 20 lawsuits against resellers accused of distributing unauthorized copies of its software. The lawsuits, filed against 20 resellers in the U.S., accuse the companies of either distributing counterfeit software on CDs or installing it on PCs that are then sold to consumers and businesses, a practice known as hard disk loading, Microsoft said Tuesday. The software maker filed the lawsuits in nine U.S. states. The names of the companies and the states where they are located are listed in a Microsoft statementÂ available here. Microsoft also announced the results of its first large-scale forensic analysis of counterfeit versions of Windows acquired in 17 countries. The company found that 34 percent of the 348 counterfeit copies analyzed could not be installed on computers, and that 43 percent contained additional programs that aren't part of Windows. The legal actions and the forensic analysis are part of Microsoft's broader Genuine Software Initiative, a program to protect the company's intellectual property. In 2005, MicrosoftÂ introduced Windows Genuine AdvantageÂ (WGA) as part of this initiative. WGA automatically checks that customers using Windows Update, Microsoft Update for Windows and the Microsoft Download Center have a legitimate version of Windows before they can download updates from those services.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has won a patent for a digital-watermarking technology that could be used to protect the rights of content owners even when digital music is distributed without DRM protection.  The technology, called "stealthy audio watermarking," inserts and detects watermarks in audio signals that can identify the content producer, "providing a signature that is embedded in the audio signal and cannot be removed," according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trade Organization (USPTO). The application for U.S. patent 7,266,697 was filed May 3, 2004, by Darko Kirovski and Henrique Malvar, both of whom work at Microsoft Research. Malvar is a Microsoft distinguished engineer and managing director of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, and Kirovski is a researcher there. Microsoft currently has DRM technology called Windows Media DRM that encrypts audio files and protects them from misuse or unauthorized redistribution. The company has traditionally been an outspoken proponent of using DRM to protect owners of digital content, though it said earlier this year it would consider selling DRM-free songs online after rival Apple struck a deal with EMI Group to do so. Forensic digital watermarking technology like the technology Microsoft has patented doesn't encrypt files the way DRM technology does or prevent people from unauthorized use. However, it can be used to prove who owns the content of the digital file by encoding a file with a unique digital signature. That means illegally traded songs could be tracked back to the original purchaser, allowing authorities to identify illegal sharers and serving as a deterrent. The technology could also be used to track files for royalty distribution. In fact, Apple has been inserting simple watermarks into digital audio files that include personal information about the purchaser on some files sold over iTunes so those files can be traced back to their purchaser in the case of unauthorized distribution. However, Microsoft's watermark is much more intrinsic to the file and cannot be stripped out easily by hackers, like Apple's can, said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science PhD candidate at Princeton University who specializes in DRM technology. "It's much harder for people to remove from the recording," he said. The trick for these watermarks to be effective for digital music files, however, is that they must be inaudible and thus undetectable by those listening to the files, which has been difficult for those who have tried to create this technology in the past, Halderman said. Indeed, in their filing, Kirovski and Malvar acknowledged that to work properly, the watermarks must not only be inaudible, but also "must be scattered throughout the file in such a way that they cannot be identified and manipulated" and "be robust enough so that it can withstand normal changes to the file, such as reductions from ... compression algorithms." Microsoft Tuesday declined to comment on how it plans to use the watermark technology it has patented. However, Microsoft Research already has licensed similar yet non-forensic watermarking technology to a company called Activated Content, which is using the technology to insert and extract non-secure data into audio files.
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NOVEMBER 12, 2004 (REUTERS) - In a joint operation, Greek and British police have cracked a multimillion-dollar illegal software sales ring, arresting two people and seizing thousands of pirated high-tech software programs.
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The software kingpin touts its role in bringing down a $900 million piracy ring, mainly as a warning for anyone else with big ideas.
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As part of its efforts to combat software piracy, Microsoft Corp. is testing a new feature on its Download Center Web site that can lock out pirated copies of Windows.
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Eleven people from across the US were indicted on Wednesday over alleged software piracy offences following the largest seizure of counterfeit Microsoft software to date.
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(InfoWorld) - A French CD duplicator has agreed to compensate MicrosoftÂ after producing discs with unauthorized copies of Microsoft software, the companies said Tuesday. In 2003 a Thai subsidiary of the French company MPO Group produced 20,000 counterfeit copies of Microsoft's Exchange and SQL Server products, the software vendor said. MPO blamed the incident on a misunderstanding over licenses: it had copied the discs for a third party claiming to be licensed by Microsoft to distribute the software, but that license later turned out to be forged, Microsoft said. Microsoft does not allow its software to be reproduced under a third-party license in that way, it said. MPO has a disk replication agreement directly with Microsoft for other software. MPO, based in Averton, France, paid Microsoft compensation for the incident, said Audrey Bernal, a spokeswoman for the CD duplicator. Microsoft described the compensation as a "multimillion dollar settlement." Microsoft tracked down the source of the counterfeit software by making test purchases in Asia and examining the discs. MPO cooperated with the investigation, Microsoft said. The software vendor warns buyers to look out for certain warning signs to help them identify counterfeit software, including making sure that it comes from a reputable source and looks like the genuine article. It is unclear how those guidelines help in cases such as this, where the disputed discs were copied by a company authorized by Microsoft to duplicate other software. Although MPO joined the International Recording Media Association's Anti-Piracy Compliance Program in 2005, its plant in Thailand is not yet on the list of IRMA Anti-Piracy Certified Plants.