Free Republic

Major studios charge Google suggested keywords such as 'bootleg movie download,' and 'pirated.' Search engine execs pledge reform. Internet search leader Google is facing criticism from major media companies for reportedly working closely to help two Web sites accused of film pirating. The Wall Street Journal reported that Brandon Drury and Luke Sample, who are accused of promoting film piracy in a suit brought by major film studios, got significant support from Google between 2003 and 2005. The two men had Web sites - EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com - which the paper said enabled users to search for movies on the...

THE career of President Vladimir Putin of Russia was built at least in part on a lie, according to US researchers. A new study of an economics thesis written by Putin in the mid-1990s has revealed that large chunks of it were copied from an American text. Putin was labelled a plagiarist yesterday after a pair of researchers at the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC think tank, established that the Russian president’s academic credentials were based on a dissertation he had lifted in part verbatim from the Russian translation of a management study written by two professors at the University...

The next time you visit the Web site of Microsoft Corp. to download some software, be prepared to let the world’s biggest software company have a look inside your computer. In a determined strike to quell the proliferation of counterfeit software, Microsoft is now requiring that all customers coming to its Web site for upgrades and other downloads submit their computers to an electronic frisking. If you use one of the estimated 100 million PCs running pirated software, don’t expect your upgrade. For Microsoft, the new policy is a stepped-up effort to combat the loss of billions of dollars’ worth...

More than a third of the software installed on PCs worldwide during 2004 was pirated, with losses from unauthorized software increasing by $4 billion from 2003, according to a study released this week by the software trade group Business Software Alliance. Thirty-five percent of all software installed on PCs was pirated, down from 36 percent in 2003, according to the study, conducted by research firm IDC. Estimated losses from software piracy climbed, however, from $29 billion to $33 billion, as both the legal and unauthorized software markets grew from 2003 to 2004. IDC estimated that $90 billion worth of software...

MICROSOFT Corp. is staging another attack against software pirates with an amnesty program for unwitting users of bootlegged copies of its Windows XP operating system (OS).The project enables the software giant to collate information about the sources of pirated software and quickly work with authorities to capture illegal traders.In addition, the company also wants to get to the source of the problem, which it suspects is the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) sector. It promised not to prosecute individuals.In its website, Microsoft announced the Windows XP Counterfeit Project for users who are “unsure” if they are using legitimate versions of the...