Spanish police arrest 14 for Microsoft piracy
Reuters | at | by Mike
Spanish police have arrested 14 people for intellectual piracy, including the first-known forgeries of authenticity certificates for Microsoft's Windows XP Professional edition, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday. Investigators found 3,000 perfectly copied and packaged CDs with the operating system software, accompanied by the fake guarantee certificates, in the northern city of San Sebastian, the Ministry said in a statement.
They would have been sold as genuine, netting the copiers over $1.52 million, the statement added. Spain has the second-highest level of information piracy in Western Europe, after Greece, according to an industry survey, Microsoft said in a statement released after the arrests.