RSSMicrosoft Denies Piracy Accusations
By David Worthington | Published November 18, 2004, 12:34 AM
As a founding member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), Microsoft is a strong proponent of anti-piracy regulation, software copyright protection and consumer education. Despite all of its anti-piracy bravado, Microsoft found itself on the receiving end of accusations that it used an illegal copy of Sound Forge to edit WAV sound files that shipped as part of the Windows Media Player Tour in Windows XP.
In response a report published by the German technology magazine PC-WELT alleging malfeasance, Microsoft told BetaNews that shipping content in the released version of the tour was developed using licensed software.
Erin Cullen, Lead Product Manager of the Windows Consumer Division fingers a placeholder file that was overwritten with original music, but mistakenly was not purged of metadata that references "Deepz0Ne," a founding member of an audio software cracking group known as Radium. Coincidentally, metadata also linked the file to Sound Forge 4.5. The contested files can be found in the Windows directory at the location: \Help\Tours\ WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav.
"It bears mentioning that Microsoft has licensed copies of all software used by the User Assistance teams in building these tours (both in past and present)," said Cullen. "Microsoft has copyright to use the .wav file in question and did not use a cracked version of this software in development of the tour in Windows XP."
Although it was initially reluctant to comment, Microsoft has since elected to stamp out any rumors, and the company claims to be actively investigating the incident to determine the origins of the file and ensure that a similar situation does not happen again.
Even while Microsoft finds itself on the other side of the looking glass, it has undeniably taken a leading role in industry coalitions to weed out software piracy. Most recently, Redmond took legal action in conjunction with the BSA to thwart the practice within a Paintsville, KY engineering firm.
Microsoft's position is that customers must protect themselves against piracy and take steps to ensure that they are using genuine Microsoft products, understand the importance of licensing terms and strengthen their software management practices.
Other tactics involve offering incentives to use licensed software. Microsoft launched the Windows Genuine Advantage pilot program to reward customers who validate their Windows license with special perks at the Microsoft Download Center. Additional Microsoft programs offer low-priced distributions of Windows -- called Windows XP Starter Edition -- to extend affordable software to disadvantaged people within participating countries.
In a Global Software Piracy Study published in July, the BSA estimated that, "thirty-six percent of the software installed on computers worldwide was pirated in 2003, representing a loss of nearly $29 billion USD."
Nate Mook contributed to this report.
I notice this article keeps saying "file." While there are 9 files that were created using Sound Forge 4.5 registered to Deepz0ne.
And that metadata wouldn't be there unless the file was created with that.
I'm not saying this is Microsoft policy to use pirated software. However someone there did, and it looks bad for them.
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|I agree that there is a rebuttable presumption that Soundforge may have been used in making that file. However, metadata can be manipulated and does not conclusively establish that program was in fact used on that file. A prankster / skript kiddie could have altered the metadata. What better way to embarass the 800lb gorilla by slipping something underneath its nose?
There is no conclusive proof someone did in fact use pirated software. However, if the metadata was in fact created by Soundforge, it would only establish that the program was cracked. There is no software piracy when you possess a license to the software notwithstanding the crack.
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|yep there it is, just open one of the wav files with notepad, and go to the bottom. VERY INTERESTING! Now i wonder how many employees of the RIAA and MPAA we can find who have kids who download stuff off KAZAA.
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|The most obvious way, to me, is that some work was done out-of-the-office. The pirate copy is on the 'home' machine.
The poor guy says ~ I'm not going to pay for this, I'm already doing this on my own time. ~
Regards,
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|I seriously doubt that Microsoft (or any other legitimate company) knowingly hires or outsources work to persons using pirated software. I cannot imagine why a news magazine would make a "story" about ONE (and ONLY ONE) instance of unproven allegation of software piracy. Microsoft doesn't appear to be engaging in any pattern of regular misconduct nor has this news magazine offered any proof of such. Furthermore, the magazine is making a BIG step assuming that the Soundforge copy was indeed pirated. It is not illegal (although it may be a violation of the software license) to use cracks or keygens. There are many legitimate uses for circumventions like protecting your privacy (e.g. phone home, forced registration), and limiting annoying features.
I think inconsistencies and irregularities in almost anything if one tries hard enough. I wonder if we looked at PC-WELT's servers and their employees computers, would we find image files or document files with a pirated program.
I wonder whether PC-WELT has considered the fallout from their irresponsible journalism. Honest people's jobs and careers could be lost, not to mention getting sued for libeling the 800 lb gorilla all because of ignorant and unsubstantiated conclusions.
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|hmm I don't agree with you there. Using cracks and keygens are illegal since they break the software licence. Of course there are some occasions where one would like to use a keygen or crack, but it doesn't take away the illegality of that.
Which makes it mighty strange that these files do have those marks in it.
Furthermore if every copy of the cd that version Windows XP contains those files, and I have no doubt that PC-Welt did an intensive search on those, I don't think it is libel. The facts are there, the cracked version of that software was used, whether it was to create the placeholders or the real files.
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|It has been documented that Microsoft does have a license for the software, so what if they cracked it, they paid for the license anyway !!!
Does this make sense?
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|If you only need that magical piece of software for one of the functions it has and tries to market to you with other more basic tools (just a situation) then I even personally crack it if the use does not out-weigh the cost.
I would never buy something I only use once.
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|why would a company that generates millions of dollars a second use pirated software? please...this is just a stupid claim that microsoft is going to take THEM to court for
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|I presume that this will all eventually boil down to one person or perhaps a group of people working on the project. It might be that they were just lazy and found it easier to pirate the software than go through the hoops of getting signoff to purchase it...
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|Microsoft developers and support people tend to find the "right" tools to accomplish any job. It is not common for individuals to use "third-party" tools to achieve their goals even if they are from questionable sources.
I recall that the MS Office support teams even resorted to OpenOffice.org to recover corrupt MS Word and MS Excel files when internal tools failed.
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|I've also heard microsoft has at times refered customers to bootdisk.com to download a windows 98 startup disk as well. Anyway, I think these lawsuits are doing nothing but hurting the economy, and quite frankly I'm tired of Microsoft getting sued. The loss of MSJAVA is the biggest, and affects my job everyday as I use a javascript web page for entering records to a database, and ever since XP SP1a was installed, it's as slow as can be. That's another can of worms though.
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|MSJAVA has nothing to do with JavaScript. Sun Microsystems created the Java programming language. Since Java was so inovative and useful Micorosft tried to "add" Windows-only technologies to it, which goes against the licence agreement accompanied by Java. Sun believed that Java is a multiplatform tool and should not have any feature that is not available on other platforms and Microsoft did not want to port the Windows-only features to all the platforms and operating systems that supported Java. So Sun suied Microsoft and Sun won. That's the story. JavaScript is just a scripting language used in web pages and other programs that need a scripting tool. Again, it has nothing to do with Java or Microsoft's Java.
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