Pirates scoff at Microsoft's anti-piracy day
THE SAME DAY that the Microsoft Vole launched its global " Anti Piracy Day" the crazy "pirates" from Sweden that run the Pirate Bay, self defined as the "World's largest BitTorrent tracker" decided to scoff at the software giant's initiative.
Visitors to the tracker quickly found the page "did a Google" and changed its logo to celebrate the special day in their own humorous way. Its logo above the search field changed to that famous Bill Gates 1970s "Mug Shot", with the caption "Bill Gates made me do it", followed by "Microsoft Anti-Piracy Day, Oct 21".
That new logo links to a search request on the site with "Microsoft" as a search string, where you can see all of the Redmond firm's software products currently listed on the tracker and available for download from other BitTorent users, including Office 2007 Enterprise, Vista Ultimate with integrated Service Pack 1, and more.
Clearly the Pirate Bay guys are emboldened and defiant, in addition to insanely humorous. We guess the Vole's own Anti-Piracy experts won't be too happy. The software giant says that piracy "equals lost wages, lost jobs, and unfair competition" and admits that "some companies" - without detailing which ones - must "devote resources to anti-piracy technology, ultimately slowing down the development of better products and services". If this is a reference to Microsoft's own WGA " Windows Genuine Advantage" and the Vista SNAFU, we don't know.
The Pirate Bay torrent tracker has been involved in legal imbroglios several times, including a raid of its servers by the police, but so far remains afloat. It routinely receives letters from law firms representing software companies - often invoking the DMCA, a U.S. law - which the administrators are often more than happy to publish and mock up with their own reply letters on the site's own "legal threats" section.
A group of Swedes even launched a few years ago a Pirate "Political Party" with the message that "corporations are engaging in racketeering in the developing world and a few power hungry individuals and greedy corporate entities are infringing on privacy and integrity".
So far Microsoft has not responded to the Pirate Bay's mocking of its laudable and good-spirited efforts. ยต
L'INQs
The Pirate
Bay's Bill Gates logo
Microsoft's
Piracy-Reporting form
Global
Anti-Piracy Day Virtual Press Room
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Piracy? anti-piracy? what are you lot on about?

If I took your car, you don't have a car. If I took a copy of your car, I still didn't take you car.

If you FORCED me to buy your copy of the car, I wouldn't.

Loss of revenue??

Rubbish.

I call this, MicroFail day.
I hope they succeed! The piracy of windows is hurting linux. If there was no means to get windows for free many teenagers with no exta cash to spend on MS crapware would try out open source alternatives.
I have to say its a rich comment coming from Microsoft bleating about unfair competition.

With all the dirty tricks, underhand methods, FUD spreading, anti trust and competition crushing antics they have put their name to in the past.

They are indeed a bunch of tossers, I am so pleased they released vista and its so very very crap.

It seems every other OS from Microsoft is a "duffer" 

Win 95 - duffer
Win 98 - passable
Win Me - scorchingly bad duffer
Windows 2000/XP - rather good.
Vista - nearly as bad as win Me.

Oh and by the way Openoffice 3.0 RULEZ


You know the boys at the Bay are going to prison for a long, long time so they need to get in a few laughs now because they won't be laughing much longer.
This is really quite breathtakingly tasteless and offensive of Microsoft, given the recent heavy news coverage of, oh look, *actual robbery and murder at sea* off the coast of Somalia. Yes, copying that floppy is *exactly* like that. Offensive idiots.

My blog rant: http://tinyurl.com/5rt664
The TPB will mock MS enough, and vendetta will ensue. Covering it enthusiastically by the press will speed up the process. 
MS changed the standardization laws at ISO, and they can change the laws in Sweden.
" Microsoft... its laudable and good-spirited efforts."

Knowing The Inq as I do I am sure you mean exactly that. I too have nothing but respect for the mighty vole.
I've uploaded 3+GB of mostly pirated content just like every other day.

Maybe next year, Microsoft.
I think this is really a good thing... all these computers in China not getting updated because they're not legit are the cause of a lot of grief in terms of botnets. Hopefully this will help with the adoption of Linux. 

Personally, I believe if you want to use Windows, you should pay for it. I personally paid for my copy of Windows 2000 years ago that I still use. I might make the switch to Windows 7 if it's a decent product and I need the benefits of a 64 bit version of Windows.
I must point out that the Swedish are not the only ones with a Pirate Party any more. Pirate Parties in Germany have contested elections at the state level, and at least 6 countries should have a pirate party candidate for the June 2009 European Parliament elections. Outside Europe, there are parties forming as well, including the US (which isn't easy in a country set up to deter political party formation)

Pirate Parties are not just about copyright either, but are also about personal privacy, rule of law, and accountability of government to citizens. The US party was strongly opposed to the FISA amendment, while the Swedish party has held demonstrations against the new FRA law.

The Pirate Parties of the world offers a choice, of a modern forward thinking party, with no bad ties. No lobbyist links, no religious fundamentalism, no left/right doctrine to be paid lip service. Just plain old common sense.

Andrew Norton
Coordinator
Pirate Party International
Nobody shall have more than 30% sales in one type of product. If it has, that it shall pay everything that is over 30% to state.
I hope that these US businesses win over piracy. How man millions of dollars in lost revenue each year is there due to people in other countries stealing from Americans? It makes me upset and angry hard working people are not paid for the work they do. I used to write code and I know how much work they put into it and to have it stolen is something that should be prevented.
software isn't phisical
u can touch a car genius
u can't touch a software
it's like a poem

clear your mind
copy something isn't correct
that's it

but we don't linve in a perfect world :) :)

The people like 'W00t??' haven't made any worthy things. That's why they think so.
Why should we pay to singer/songwriter, book writers, actors, software companies? They will do their job without payments. Right?
Recently I published my shareware. I received some good opinions. But haven't received much money. I like to write software, but I need money to live, you know. So I have stopped writing shareware.
How many people would agree to use their credit card, their real name and street number in order to purchase software if they could freely use it?
I think in case of Microsoft, they are receiving money in several times less than ought to.
If nothing will change in the future we will use Microsoft Windows as an internet service...
Those big commercial entities who are the loudest opponents of piracy are sitting on a wad of cash, have a ton of resources and are holding hundreds of patents thus locking the small guys out of the business.
They not only have their monopolistic grasp on the market dictating availability and pricing, but also on the technology progress which a Bad Thing(TM).
In my opinion, the pirates are just leveling the playing field. I for one am thankfull for that.