Microsoft fires cannon at counterfeiters

In its latest attempts to rid pirates from its shores, Microsoft has set up a new* website to help its customers spot dodgy software. Redmond also confirmed on Wednesday that it had filed 20 lawsuits in the US against alleged distributors of counterfeit copies of Windows XP and Office 2003. It's a two-pronged attack from …

[Eddie Edwards]

How to Tell has been up since 2002

http://web.archive.org/web/20021201102855/http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/

[Peter Hewitt]

New website

Hasn't that website been around for ages - linked from the help menu in XP's Explorer, it just appears to have had a small revamp.

I fail to see the Paris Hilton angle in this story.

[Martin Huizing]

Sure...

...750 thou jobs lost, but how many jobs created in the counterfeit market? Those are people too, you know!

hehehe

ps. I use a counterfeit Windows ME as my beer place mat (for all the right reasons).

Martin

[Dan]

well you do charge..

Quite unfairly to be honest, why don't they try making it not look like the uk (and i assume the rest of Europe) should in some way have to pay more for the same software that is much cheaper in the us.

(yes my copy of xp is legit :P )

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista

If Vista is so great, why is the market for counterfeit XP so healthy?

[Geoff Mackenzie]

All my MS software is legit too...

Then again I don't run any.

[Martin Maloney]

WinXP and MSO2K3?

Windows 2000 and Office 2000 will do everything that most SOHO users need to do. Moreover, both products are mature and dependable.

Win2K is not only for older machines. Even most "bleeding edge" hardware provides driver support.

A bonus is that neither product is "advantaged" by WGA and forced updates and reboots.

Martin

[JimC]

If they know How to Tell

then why the **** don't they let Windows Genuine Advantage know, because that sure as **** doesn't.

[t3h]

Parallel importing is wrong?

In recent months, Microsoft has been making similar legal noises in Europe, clamping down on the so-called "grey software" or parallel importing market, where branded goods bought in one country are flogged elsewhere at a marked-down price.

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Just me, or should that be perfectly OK? I don't see what's wrong with buying it, at the normal sale price, perfectly legitimately in one country and selling it in another. Just because it ruins their price gouging in one country, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the BBC,

you have to use MS products, and you have pay more for it than Americans, and if you don't you go to jail, tough if you don't like it stop complaining and eat your gruel.

[Shadow Systems]

Given that MS has wrongly identified legit copies as pirated...

Bad enough being told my son's legit copy of XP was invalid (an OEM install on an HP Pavillion, bought direct from HP? I don't think so!)...

But when I was told my copy of Vista was pirated, while the receipt for its purchase from my local Electronics Mega Store was still sitting on the package, (had just unwrapped it & was going to install it on said Pavillion), I was livid enough to take it back and MAKE the store give me my money back.

I and my son now run Linux.

I'd've bought a Mac, but I'm not THAT rich, thanks... =J.

[Anonymous Coward]

@t3h

Spot on, mate!

I can accept all the fuss about counterfeit software... after all, it's linked to organised criime, and getting rid of that is in everyone's* interests.

BUT... and it's a big BUT... genuine software "intended" to be sold in another country is genuine... full stop. Whether or not Microsoft can sue the importers, users should just install and forget, as long as MS nobbleware doesn't somehow stop it working (but you shouldn't let it phone home if you can help it).

As has already been said, this is just protection of commercial profit... so sue, Microsoft, but we don't care. Your "cannon" just farted...

(If a fart is a "botty burp", is shiatzu a "botty sneeze"...?)

[Statement of the bleedin' obvious: well, almost... obviously, it's not in the interests of organised crime]