Legal Niches

Microsoft Learns a Lesson about Copyright Enforcement

By james_fudge

A recent New York Times article went into detail on Microsoft's efforts to crack down on piracy in Russia. Instead of cracking down on infringers, Russian police used the issue of infringement to crack down on political dissenters. According to the report, Russian police raided the offices of opposition groups, newspapers, blogs, and other groups that did not agree with them. They seized their computers, using the suspicion of Windows software piracy as the excuse.

Even when police did not find illegal software, they rarely ever returned the computers. Sometimes they would simply say the computers contained illegal software. While the charges would rarely stick, having computers taken away with vital data on them proved to be disruptive to these groups that opposed the government.

Meanwhile, Microsoft found itself at the heart of this immoral battle, with its name and its software on the lips of the Russian police. At first Microsoft supported the police and said it was required to cooperate under Russian law. However, everything changed when the victim of a raid, environmental group Baikal Wave, wrote Microsoft to protest. Read More

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Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on September 25, 2010 (boomark / email).