Re-education
Microsoft has announced 15 more settlements with UK traders it had identified as selling illegal versions of its software.
Most of these settlements involved smaller traders doing things like hard disk loading - where one software license is used to install on several PCs - or selling improperly licensed software. It seems that 14 of these traders have seen the error of their ways and are correcting their practices.
One trader: Kevin Genner of Genner Sales, didn't seem to get the message, however, and has been fined £75,000 in costs and damages, which Microsoft has agreed to defer until such a time as Genner is tempted to transgress again.
Genner can console himself that he got off lightly compared to Barry Omesuh, who was fined £2.5 million last week for parallel importing and then given nine months in prison for lying to the court.
Microsoft has long established internal legal and investigative teams for tackling this sort of thing and there's no doubt that the trade in illegal software products damages the legitimate Microsoft channel. However, a large, rich company like Microsoft is always going to face a PR challenge when announcing victories over small, local traders.
Perhaps with this in mind Microsoft is trying to stress that all this action is about educating people on how to legally trade its software. A common defense from traders in illegal software is that they didn't think they were doing anything wrong, so you can see where Microsoft's coming from, but there's also something slightly Orwellian about the thought of Microsoft field agents roaming the country, educating traders.
