China Jails Four For Microsoft XP Piracy 164
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."
interesting (Score:2, Informative)
I wondered why China would bother upholding the copyright of a foreign country now when CHina has a history of lax copyright enforcement in the past until the BSA got involved that is:
In June last year, the Business Software Allianceâ"a business coalition campaigning against commercial piracyâ"complained to Chinese authorities, and Hong and his colleagues were arrested later in the year.
Re:Because they're about to start writing software (Score:2, Informative)
They are in their second millennium of being a civilization.
More like their third, at least. Chinese civilization certainly extends back past 1 BCE.
Re:Big nothing. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big nothing. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Use Linux (Score:5, Informative)
These aren't 4 random guys pirating Windows for their own use, so your suggestion to just use Linux isn't relevant. These assholes were trying to be 1337. From TFA:
Hong "created the Tomato Garden version of the Windows XP," which crippled the program's authentication and certification barriers, said Xinhua, allowing users unrestricted access to the popular Microsoft software. Millions of Internet users then had free access to the software on a website, tomatolei.com, which made its earnings from advertisements on the site, it said.
I think 3,5 years (and 2 years for 2 others) for maliciously ripping off someone else's work and distributing it is quite mild by China's standards. Hell with the current laws it might be mild by US standards.
Re:Big nothing. (Score:1, Informative)
In China, it's traditional to round up a "Gang of Four" when the state sees fit to make some dangerous or rascallian element the object of a show trial.
Not to be confused with this [amazon.com].
Re:Use Linux (Score:3, Informative)
But, it will run fine in virtualbox [virtualbox.org], using the asio4all [asio4all.com] driver inside the VM. FLStudio will too, for that matter - though the GUI takes a bit more CPU than it normally would.
You still need a copy of windows however :/
Re:Because they're about to start writing software (Score:3, Informative)
You left out:
rice cultivation
movable type
chopsticks (and the fork)
bells
booze
silk
kite (and the hang glider)
rotary fan
porcelain
use of natural gas
tea
and heaps more things [wikipedia.org]
Re:Use Linux (Score:3, Informative)
I work in IT, and I can tell you that most people don't even know what an OS is. All they see is a computer that lets them type in Word or go on Facebook.
The problem with trying to move people to Linux is always compatibility. It's much better than it used to be thanks to Open Office Word document support and a selection of good web browsers, but you still can't just go out and buy Photoshop or a game and expect it to work. I know there are free alternatives, but people are trained at work or college to use a particular program. You cannot underestimate the number of people who know what steps are needed to do something on a computer but are not clued up enough to figure out how to do the same thing in another app.
Again, OO is good because it looks and feels almost exactly like Word 2003, and as more apps move to the web it will continue to improve. You have to be realistic about moving the general public over to Linux though.
Re:Because they're about to start writing software (Score:3, Informative)
booze
This one surprised me - I thought the earliest known alcoholic beverages were beers brewed in Egypt. Checking your Wikipedia link confirmed this; they invented a process for making stronger beer (more than 4-5%), they didn't invent booze.