Sunday, January 04, 2009

IP Show

The Intellectual Property Police (not the Thought Police from 1984) in Shenzhen have taken down a Microsoft piracy scheme in a show of force that China Daily claims, "showed China's resolve in global intellectual property rights (IPR) protection."

Eleven people were convicted of "sophisticated" piracy of Microsoft products that were sold around the mainland and Hong Kong. The key word is sophisticated. This operation printed up fake certificates of authenticity to be sold with the software. No word on if the authentication codes that were sold worked.

The difference between this operation and the millions of others around China is that this one tried to pass off the product as genuine. Apparently, it's still OK to sell pirated software as long as it's poor quality and obviously fake.

This dog and pony show was for Microsoft's benefit before the PRC gouges the company for millions of Yuan for its previous effort of fighting piracy on its own.

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