Microsoft gets its man

Here’s an interesting piece about the lengths Microsoft went to shut down and aid in the apprehension of a $900 million software piracy ring — and just how hard it had to work to stay, or eventually get, ahead of the bad guys:

The pirates mimicked complex holograms stamped directly onto disks and packaging materials embedded with the kind of tiny safety threads used in making money. In some cases, it took experts with microscopes to notice that disks printed with codes used by legitimate software factories lacked certain minuscule, unique smudges.

“The copies were so good, we went to tremendous forensic and scientific lengths to establish that the counterfeits were, in fact, counterfeits,” said David Finn, an associate general counsel at Microsoft.

Who knows what could happen if Microsoft went to such lengths to develop, say, an operating system!