Spanish police have arrested 14 people on charges of
intellectual piracy after discovering 3,000 forged copies of
Microsoft's Windows XP Professional Edition software along with
forged certificates of authentication.
The forged certificates are the first to be discovered for
Windows XP Professional Edition and are believed to have been made
in the country.
The software and more than 4,000 forged certificates were
located in the north eastern city of San Sebastián. Some of the
software was packaged with a certificate and manual, constituting a
"pack" that could be sold for between €279(£193) and €414.
Microsoft estimated that the total pirated goods could have sold
for as much as €1.2m on the open market.
Spain has one of the highest incidences of software piracy in
Western Europe after Greece, according to data from the Business
Software Alliance (BSA).
The piracy raid was particularly worrying since the software
found was accompanied by forged certificates that would make the
goods appear genuine to consumers.
The BSA is already working with Spain's Science and Technology
Ministry on a campaign to raise awareness about the problem of
piracy, saying that it is having a debilitating effect on the
country's economy.
Scarlett Pruitt writes for IDG News Service