Earlier this year software giant Microsoft launched a lawsuit against Lithuania’s largest BitTorrent tracker for its role in the unauthorized distribution of Office 2003 and 2007. Microsoft successfully obtained an injunction against the site and the operator’s assets were seized, but these requests have now been overturned by the appeal court.
According to the on-site WiFi operators at Microsoft’s Tech.Ed Australia 2009 conference, abnormal levels of network consumption by some users led them to take action against BitTorrent by ‘Rickrolling’ users who tried to access the most popular torrent sites. Interestingly, bandwidth usage wasn’t the problem.
In conjunction with Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit LANVA, software giant Microsoft has sued the alleged operator of the country’s largest BitTorrent site. Microsoft is demanding $43 million from the defendant and his company for assisting in the illegal distribution of Office 2003 and 2007.
The Delhi High Court has fined Microsoft for harassing alleged software pirates by taking them to court in the national capitol, instead of the cities where the crimes had supposedly occurred. According to the ruling, using money as a power tool is not condoned without repercussions.
Players of the PC game Gears of War have a problem that means they are currently unable to even load their game. The reason – a hard-coded shutoff date in the DRM that prevents the game from playing. Yet again, DRM prevents an honestly purchased game from working. Will Crysis and GTA IV break next?
Today, Microsoft announced Global Anti-Piracy Day, to draw attention to the ever growing piracy problem. While Microsoft itself celebrates October 21st by launching anti-piracy enforcement actions in 49 countries, The Pirate Bay does so by linking to counterfeit Microsoft products on their frontpage – in every country in the world.
Microsoft is a large corporation, and most large corporations distrust everything to do with filesharing. What they don’t realise is how much they stand to gain from from filesharing networks, in paticular, BitTorrent.
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Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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