China Jails Four For Microsoft XP Piracy

adeelarshad82 writes "Chinese court has jailed four people for spreading their bootleg 'Tomato Garden' version of Microsoft's Windows XP program, in what the Xinhua news agency called the nation's biggest software piracy case. One of the four men Hong Lei, the creator of the downloadable 'Tomato Garden Windows XP' software, was jailed for three and a half years by a court in Suzhou in eastern China, Xinhua."

Comments

Re:Use Linux

[wizardforce]

well said- MS may be hurting its self big time by cracking down on the pirates- its probably the easiest way they could have created an MS centric Chinese software market. Now people have a better reason to use FOSS based OSes than under a Chinese Windows pirating culture.

Business feasibility

[stimpleton]

A friend of mine has been doing business as a foreign company in china for a few years.

He is very matter of fact about it. You build into your budget, the kickback amounts.

I have thought about this a bit, and the attutide is somewhat akin to the tipping/no tipping cultures. I spent time in the US and once I accepted tipping I saw it was a better system. Without kickbacks/bribes you just cannot operate as a foreign company. A kickback is almost regarded as a tip in China.

srsly

[grrrl]

so making MONEY from setting up a business distributing copies of XP you altered intentionally and distribute to millions gets your 3 1/2 years but downloading a few songs for personal use gets you whacked with millions in damages which will cripple your life?

Re:Sounds Good

[Hal_Porter]

Someone in Taiwan who's familiar with such things said criminal accusations are inherently political. Pretty much all politicians are corrupt and The Party controls the courts. Best way to get rid of a rival is to denounce them for corruption. Interestingly it's not the verdict of the court case that shows they are finished, the fact that the case was not blocked is enough. Actually if you can even read about a potential case you know they are finished, because if they had a chance the coverage would have been censored. E.g. Li Peng

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Peng#Alleged_Corruption

As the findings of the investigation leaked to the general Chinese public, the Chinese government took an unexpected stand. As victims (including some influential social citizens of Beijing) of New Nation Great Co. angrily demonstrated outside the Zhongnanhai more than a dozen times, hold up the banners that claim "Li Peng return the money to us from your son", none of the demonstrations were dispersed and none of the demonstrators were arrested. Each time, the Chinese government only sent police to watch the demonstrators and did nothing else. As the information of the investigation was leaked and circulated on the Internet, it was not immediately censored; instead, it was allowed to circulate for quite some time before the eventual ban, and none of the domestic Chinese Web sites that published the info were shut down by the Chinese governmental censorship. However, the Chinese government did not respond to the victims' and public demands either. China analysts postulate such an unusual move by the Chinese government served several purposes, including pressuring Li Peng to retire from his post of chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress when he reached the age limit, as well as putting a distance between Li Peng and the government itself for the future leadership. Whatever the reason, the investigation results concerning corruption charges of Li Peng's family that leaked to the public, was tolerated by the Chinese government for a short period of time, and certainly made Li Peng and his family become more unpopular than ever among the general Chinese populace.