Friday, July 21, 2006

Windows uses pirate software

Windows XP ships with sound files which were created with a pirated copy of Sound Forge, cracked by the warez hacker "DeepzOne".

The evidence of this is surprisingly easy to find: look in the Windows\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav directory under Windows XP, and open up the WAV files in Notepad. Scroll to the end and you will find a reference in the sound file to DeepzOne.

The question is, what is DeepzOne's name doing in nine WAV files supplied with Windows XP? Lacking any other explanation, it seems on the face of it that the files were generated with a pirated copy of Sound Forge. Without further information from Microsoft, it is impossible to say whether it was a Microsoft employee or a freelancer who was responsible for that -- only the Windows Media Player team will know for sure, and so far they haven't said.

As "kaskangar" points out, there are deeper implications:

The topic still raises a moral problem, though, as Microsoft is quick to report every oh-so-minor success in the fight against piracy. In the wake of that move, the company also joined the BSA (Business Software Alliance), which has devoted itself to the "fight against software piracy" and persecutes violaters around the globe. But maybe BSA knows which office door it should knock on[.]

No comments: