Illegal Copies of Vista now MS Word

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEX: 4338)...is an American-based multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.


Microsoft has settled with 12 computer retailers caught selling illegal software to unsuspecting customers across the UK over the last six months.

According to the software giant, the majority of the software being pre-loaded onto new PCs were unlicensed copies of Office and the Vista operating system (OS).The move towards illegal copies of Vista is a change from last year when the software giant found large numbers of the perennially popular Windows XP OS being sold illegally.

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“These traders tend to be a bit behind the times but they are catching up with the latest software now,” said a Microsoft representative.

The company said the main aim of its anti-piracy drive is to protect unwitting customers and honest computer shops. It said it will offer consumers free replacement software if they have been duped by sophisticated counterfeit copies.

But Graham Arthur, anti-piracy attorney for Microsoft UK, said: “It’s not always easy to get your money back if you find out you’ve been duped. Having to fork out a second time to replace illegal software is the kind of financial headache no-one needs.”

The 12 traders have all escaped prosecution because they all admitted selling illegal software. The software giant said many of the traders did not realise that they had been illegally hard-loading the software.

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