Microsoft has demonstrated a rare ability to elicit the cooperation of law enforcement officials to go after software counterfeiters and to secure convictions — not only in India and Mexico, but also in China, Brazil, Colombia, Belize and Russia. Countries like Malaysia, Chile and Peru have set up intellectual-property protection squads that rely on Microsoft’s training and expertise to deal with software cases.
Donal Keating, Microsoft’s forensics expert,
displaying sample images of forged certifi-
cates of authenticity. As Mr. Moglen sees it, these efforts underscore a certain level of desperation on the part of American companies and the economy of ideas on which they have come to rely. “This is the postindustrial United States,” he says. “We will make other governments around the world go around enforcing rights primarily held by Americans. This is a very important part of American thinking around
how the country will make its living in the 21st century.”
MICROSOFT’S pursuit of software counterfeiters begins in Dublin, at one of the company’s 10 crime labs.
Donal Keating, a physicist who leads Microsoft’s forensics work, has turned the lab into an anti-piracy playpen full of microscopes and other equipment used to analyze software disks. Flat-screen monitors show data about counterfeit sales, and evidence bags almost overflow with nearly flawless Windows and Office fakes. Mr. Keating serves as the CD manufacturing whiz on what amounts to Microsoft’s version of the A-Team, clad in business-casual attire.
Members of the anti-piracy team are, from
left, Donal Keating, Peter Anaman, Anthony
Delaney and David Finn.The undercover operative of this group is Peter Anaman, a lawyer who was born in Ghana and educated in England; he taught hand-to-hand combat to soldiers during a stint in the French army and then taught himself how to write software. Mr. Anaman has applied his software skills and training to explore a shift in piracy from groups that make CDs to those that offer downloads online.
Through three online personas — two female and one male — Mr. Anaman chats with and sometimes befriends hackers in Russia and Eastern Europe who use stolen credit card numbers to set up hundreds of Web sites and offer products from Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec. “It is part of gathering human intelligence and tracking relationships,” Mr. Anaman says.
Through an artificial intelligence system, Microsoft scans the Web for suspicious, popular links and then sends takedown requests to Web service providers, providing evidence of questionable activity. “The Web sites look professional,” he says. “And some of them even offer customer support through call centers in India.”
The counterfeiters, however, have automated systems that replace links that Microsoft deep-sixes. So the company has turned up the dial on its link-removal machine.
We used to remove 10,000 links a month,” Mr. Anaman says. “Now, we’re removing 800,000 links a month.”
He describes the groups behind these sites as “part of the dark Web,” saying they have links to huge spam, virus and fraud networks. Microsoft’s tests of software on some popular sites have shown that 35 percent of the counterfeit software contained harmful code.
Anthony Delaney, who started at Microsoft 25 years ago — driving a forklift to move boxes of its products for shipment — has worked his way up to become its piracy data guru.
On one of the flat screens, Mr. Delaney brings up a world map that lets users zoom into a city just as they would if hunting for directions online. But instead of highlighting landmarks and popular stores, the map illuminates Microsoft’s retail partners. Hover a mouse over a shop in San Francisco, for example, and you can see how much software it sells, how often Office is sold in tandem with Windows, the failure rate for authentication codes and how many cease-and-desist letters have gone to suspicious sellers in the area.
According to the map, the area within a 50-mile radius of New York City accounted for more than 200 “actions” last year, including 165 cease-and-desist warning letters to companies suspected of selling pirated software.
source:nytimes
