With approval from their United States headquarters, Microsoft went after the largest BitTorrent site in Lithuania, LinkoManija. Microsoft accused the site and its operator of assisting in the illegal distribution of Office 2003 and 2007 and filed a lawsuit in January.

Hoping to recoup some of the claimed losses, Microsoft demanded $45 million from LinkoManija’s alleged operator Kestas Ermanas and his company. Microsoft further asked the court to close the tracker and seize the assets of Kestas.

Both requests were granted and the assets of the site’s operator and his company were seized and associated bank accounts frozen. The site, however, remained online as Kestas and his company said that they were no longer operating LinkoManija. Kestas told TorrentFreak that he handed the operation over to a third party early 2009.

The decisions were immediately appealed by Kestas and his legal team, who have now informed us that the Appeal Court overturned both. According to the ruling the site should not be closed before there is a verdict in the full trial, and Kestas has also regained access to his personal bank accounts.

This is not the only setback for Microsoft in Lithuania. It previously lost its court case against a user of LinkoManija who they claimed had shared Windows 7 Ultimate illegally. The man was on trial in March and walked free due to a lack of evidence.

The main trial against LinkoManija’s operator and his company is expected to start in the near future although no official date has yet been set.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Co-president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, Jim Allchin called the Vista RTM (release to manufacturing) a ‘significant milestone’.

The RTM signifies the next phase for Windows Vista: our development work is done and now the progress begins for the PC and device manufacturers and software developers to finalize the work on their products and applications.

Microsoft has had some issues before with BitTorrent. In June they released a freely available Beta version of Windows Vista. Microsoft said that this was probably one of the largest download operations ever, they even had to limit the available bandwidth to “prevent the Internet from collapsing.”

Several people (e.g. BitTorrent.com and vistatorrent.com) thought this would be an ideal opportunity to release a torrent in order to save Microsoft some bandwidth, but Microsoft said that there were “legal and privacy issues which unfortunately make that not an option for Microsoft to officially sponsor a BitTorrent.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.