p2pnet.net news:- Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev asked Microsoft boss Bill Gates to intervene in a case in which Alexander Ponosov, a Russian school teacher, was accused of criminally using Microsoft applications.

Gates declined but a Russian court nonetheless dumped the case, calling it “trivial”.

However, the BBC says the BBCA Russian court has ordered a retrial, “after pressure from the prosecution”.

“Mr Ponosov is accused of breaking intellectual property rights, by installing pirate copies of the Windows operating system and Microsoft Word,” says the story, going on, “He insists the 12 new computers at his school had been delivered with the unlicensed software already installed. The school in the Urals village of Sepych has 380 pupils.”

Russia is accused of being one of the countries most favoured by so-called software “pirates,” once known as counterfeiters, and Microsoft is among the vested interests, including the entertainment cartels, using the Bush administration to lean heavily in the Russian authorities to better protect corporate interests, claiming what’s good for them is good for everyone.

“Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that the manufacturers of pirate goods - and not consumers - should be targeted and said the trial was ‘utter nonsense’,” says the BBC, adding:

“Microsoft has distanced itself from the prosecution, saying it had nothing to do with the charges and had opted last year not to bring any civil action.”

But Bill and the Boyz haven’t gone too far away.

“If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else,” said Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes recently. “We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software.”

Nor is this concept new.

In 1998, “Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software,” said Gates, going on, “Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

Slashdot it!

Also See:
dumped the case - Teacher cleared of MS ‘piracy’, February 15, 2007
BBC - Retrial for Microsoft piracy case, March 27, 2007
we want it to be us - Steal our stuff! Microsoft exec, March 14, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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