Microsoft Denies Piracy Accusations
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.