Gotta watch those darn south of the border “drug cartels.” Not only have they fought back against Mexico’s War On Drugs, resulting in thousands of deaths, but now they’ve gotten into Bill Gates’s pockets, too.
Drug cartels are making fake copies of Office 2007 and selling ’em on the streets of Mexico, at least if you believe David Finn, Microsoft’s associate general counsel for anti-piracy, reports Curtis Cartier at Seattle Weekly.
Finn showed off a copy of counterfeit Office software “brazenly” stamped with the rectangular “FMM” logo of La Familia drug cartel, reports Heather Smith at Bloomberg.
“This is the real side, the scary side of counterfeiting and it plagues the world,” a worked-up Finn said Thursday at the Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy in Paris.
According to Finn, most consumers don’t look for fake software as a cheaper alternative, because fears over identify theft and computer viruses outweigh the low price tag.
“The risk is higher when you don’t use the real thing,” Finn claimed. Seventy percent of personal computers in China have viruses, according to Finn, which he called “a direct result” of purchases and downloads of pirated and fake products.
“Organized criminals are at the very center of the problem,” said John Newton, who heads up Interpol’s intellectual-property rights program. According to Newton, counterfeiting and piracy are “low-risk, high-profit crimes” with the proceeds often invested in “other criminal pursuits,” such as, well, La Familia.
By Steve Elliott
Original Article Appeared on Toke of the Town
