Microsoft urges global antipiracy effort
During the past six months, police or corporate lawyers have moved against alleged software pirates in 20 countries, industry officials say. The motivation for Microsoft (msft), by far the biggest victim of software piracy, is clear: During the past year, about five million units of Microsoft's products, valued at about $1.7 billion, were seized. Other companies pushing for more aggressive international action include Adobe Systems Inc., Autodesk Inc. and Corel Corp.
As part of the effort, a series of raids in Latin America resulted in the seizure of piles of contraband software. In violence-wracked Colombia, police in December turned their attention from battling narco-traffickers and Marxist rebels to focus on one particularly avid user of the Internet auction site MercadoLibre.com (www.mercadolibre.com), the eBay of Latin America. After 10 days of surveillance, police officers moved in on a private house in Bogota, and seized a stash of illicitly copied software, all of it up for sale over the Internet.
In neighboring Peru, local authorities on March 1 raided a home in Lima that served as headquarters for "clubdelsoftware.com," (www.clubdelsoftware.com) in which they seized 143 copies of Microsoft and Adobe software, the industry officials say. That same day in Venezuela, police raided the offices of a firm called Red Maniaco, another alleged purveyor of unlicensed software. In Brazil on Feb. 13, a police wing in the state of Minas Gerais that specializes in computer crime found a cache of 2,165 copies of Microsoft programs and four compact-disk duplicating machines. Argentina also has been the site of two software busts in recent months.
To combat such piracy, Microsoft recently entered into a formal partnership with the U.S. Customs Service to exchange information on intellectual-property crimes around the world. The agency has similar partnerships with other companies and trade associations, including Underwriters Laboratories and the Motion Picture Association of America.
The partnership is a formalized cooperation process where information is exchanged regularly, according to Customs spokesman Dennis Murphy. "These partnership agreements have become an effective way for us to get better information and do a better enforcement job, as well as a way for the company to get a more effective means to police their copyrights," Murphy said.
Microsoft's worldwide security force
Microsoft also has aggressively recruited its own security force of former government agents led by Richard LaMagna, a 27-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration who speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, French and Thai. During the past six months, Microsoft officials say, the company has taken legal action against 47,000 dubious or illegal postings on the Internet offering its products.
The Customs Service, through its network of attaches around the world, helps Microsoft and other companies work with foreign police agencies. In conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency last year inaugurated a new Intellectual Property Rights Center in Washington to serve as a command center for operations against copyright violators.
The stepped-up antipiracy efforts reflect new concern about an old problem for software makers. "As we've seen organized criminal enterprises focusing on counterfeiting and taking it to the Internet, it is becoming an even more important problem for the industry and the company," Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Brad Smith said.
Counterfeiters, many in Asia, have recently shifted distribution networks onto the Web, which provides a host of benefits, including anonymity.
In addition to Latin America, Microsoft says recent seizures have taken place in Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines, the People's Republic of China, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Canada and the U.S.