Teacher Avoids Getting Sent to Siberia For Piracy 252
Piracy Support Line writes "Russian principal Alexander Ponosov will not be visiting Siberia any time soon, at least not for the allegedly illegal Microsoft software that were preloaded on the computers they bought and Microsoft supported the reseller's story. Although Bill Gates rejected Mikhail Gorbachev's personal appeal for mercy on behalf of the teacher, the judge was kinder. Judge Elvira Mosheva decided to dismiss the case because 'Microsoft's financial damage is too insignificant for a criminal investigation.'"
Odd... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just sad that court costs are so high, and you can't sue for anywhere close to the actual damage.
A missed PR opportunity for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft could have handled this differently and spun the whole thing to their advantage. This could have been a "Genuine Advantage" moment. "See? Make sure your pre-installed software comes with the original disks and software keys! We'll let you off the hook, but all you out there please learn from Mr. Ponosov's predicament and deal only with reputable certified Microsoft resellers" or some such.
But instead they turned the other cheek, and a teacher almost was sentenced to prison in Siberia over something as simple as missing software keys. And a Russian judge showed more compassion and understanding of the matter than Bill Gates. Those are the facts, and they do not look good. This is, and rightfully should be, a PR nightmare for Microsoft.
A shame really. The Gates Foundation gives away piles of cash for humanitarian goals, but events like this let you know where that money is really coming from. And what people behind it are really like. Business first, before anything else, always.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft didn't go soft on anyone. They weren't suing, it was a criminal matter (ie state vs. defendant) and whether or not Microsoft approved was almost irrelevant. Again. this had little if anything to do with Microsoft.
They did miss a golden opportunity for good PR by speaking out about it, but in the end the decision came down to the judge. It wasn't Microsoft's place to go soft or hard or otherwise.
Shouldnt they be doing this with RIAA cases in US? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Meantime ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Odd... (Score:4, Insightful)
The financial damage was too insignificant? That's a rather strange reason to dismiss a case, as it violates the letter of the law.
No it doesn't. Whatever the law says, in criminal cases the prosecutor always has to decide whether or not a prosecution is in the public interest. If the damage caused by the defendant is not significant, then it probably isn't.ramifications (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I had read, the teacher was warned once, and he still continued using pirated software. Frankly he did break the law, he deserves a punishment, maybe not prison, but atleast slap on the wrist. People should be encouraged to follow licenses be in Sony's music license, microsoft's eula, or FSF's gpl.
Re:ramifications (Score:5, Insightful)
This still means that a civil prosecution would be possible.
I have never heard of a criminal prosecution anywhere in the world for a GPL violation, have you? I do not think the authorities bother with criminal prosecutions on behalf of this commie open source stuff.
So the ruling makes it harder for proprietary software companies to sue, but makes no difference in enforcing open source licences.
Of course, MS is not likely to want to enforce its licences in Russia, any more than it does in most of Asia, so piracy is now OK. I would not be surprised if MS has been leaning on the Russian authorities to ensure that the teacher got off - which would explain why the serious charges were dropped by the prosecution. They can not openly say they are in favour of piracy, but the last thing they want is people switching to Linux to save money.
Re:Ugh! They helped the prosecution. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's OK if you get your panties in a bunch when you see these stories. Really. But wearing down your #4 key to do your hilarious "M$" thing and trying to desperately spin your "OMFG IS TEH EVILZ" bull is just not going to work. Save it for when you actually have a point to make. Microsoft does plenty of bad things.
Re:A missed PR opportunity for Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Wishful thinking there. MS is just as big a tax dodger [sfgate.com] in the US as it is in Europe. Just because you pay your taxes and your company pays it's taxes doesn't mean that either Big Bill or his company do so.
It gets even simpler. You can't trust any closed source code [acm.org]. Now, there is still some quality stuff out there that MS hasn't run out of business or bought out, but the bottom line is regardless of whether it's from the MS movement or from a normal company, if you don't have access to the code for the entire tool chain, it could contain just about anything.
However, you don't have to be technically oriented to know that MS presents a problem here. Just read the EULA for 2000 SP3, XP SP1, and 2003 and later. It says flat out that you grant admin rights to Big Bill or his designated representatives.
The bottom line is that the school and the teacher were asking for trouble when they risked it with MS Windows. MS has tried the same thing in many other school districts, sometimes with success and other times driving the whole district to more appropriate technology [k12ltsp.org].
Oh please (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is irrelevant to this case too. We're not talking some security researcher who disclosed a security vulnerability, nor even cracked some DRM, but about someone who allegedly pirated some programs. I'm willing to bet that there was exactly zero research involved.
Sorry, but... Here I'll call outright bullshit. Sorry, this is _not_ about "let's use F/OSS instead of closed source", it's about using pirated closed source programs. If they wanted to support F/OSS, they could have done so, but no, they wanted to keep using Windows for free. There's a freakin' huge difference there.
And spare me the emotional parts about trust, please. So they can trust closed source if it's pirated? Does Windows become more open if you use a pirated serial number? Does Office save its files in a less proprietary format just because it's on a CD-R? WTF?
There _are_ good arguments for trusting F/OSS instead of closed source programs and proprietary formats. That senator from IIRC Peru made a damn good case for example. But this case isn't it. It's plain and simple about pirating closed source programs. If you will, it's exactly the _opposite_: these guys decided that they can trust MS and closed source all right, they just don't want to pay.
Step out of the "yay, they stuck it to MS" mentality a little, and you may see that there's little to celebrate. There would have been ways to make a pro-OSS or anti-closed-source point, but that was not what happened here. They just gave a vote of confidence to MS, if anything. Price being equal (free as in beer, even if by virtue of being stolen beer) they just decided they'd rather use Windows.
And, without going into your other points in detail, for the people of Russia I see even less to celebrate in this mockery of justice. It just shows that the whole country, including prominent figures like Gorbachev and (scarily enough) their president Putin, just can't wrap their head around such notions as "rule of the law". They're still stuck in the soviet era mentality, where "justice" is something based on scapegoats, favoritism, nepotism and rich powerful guys punishing the little guys they don't like. E.g., Gorbachev just showed that he has no freakin' clue what's the difference between a criminal case and Bill Gates persecuting a poor teacher.
If that's the kind of politicians and mentality that Russia still has, then I feel genuinely sorry for those people.
Re:Thief got away... (Score:1, Insightful)
Whoah there trigger! (Score:2, Insightful)
This guy hasn't killed anyone, hasn't abused anyone, has been educating children. Frankly both M$ and the gpl can take a running jump. This is a human being doing good in the world. Punish him and the whole world is just that little bit worse.
Ummm, spin much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thief got away... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you have more money than I do.