I didn't understand the kneejerky misdirected anger at Microsoft when this was first reported nor do I really get the congratulatory backslapping of the NYT now. Microsoft did not send their goons to some downtrodden NGO's office, they didn't confiscate anyone's computers, nor did they even accuse this particular organization of piracy. Their Russian offices may have been less than sympathetic to the NGO's frantic attempts to get their property back, but realistically, there probably wasn't a great deal they could do. The report itself suggested the NGO was running licensed software and this fact was simply ignored by the authorities who just happened to be using license enforcement as a pretext to harass an organization they didn't like. They might have well claimed Baikal Wave were running improperly licensed Ubuntu, for all the difference it would have made.
Russia is simply not a society governed by the rule of law. No well-intentioned Microsoft initiative or poignant NYT report is likely to change that.
From the original NYT report "Interviews and a review of law enforcement documents show that in recent cases, Microsoft lawyers made statements describing the company as a victim and arguing that criminal charges should be pursued." (note that Baikal Wave says it purchased and installed legal Microsoft software)
In another section 'In southwestern Russia, the Interior Ministry declared in an official document that its investigation of a human rights advocate for software piracy was begun "based on an application" from a lawyer for Microsoft.'
Microsoft corporate has ignored complaints about this for months (yesterday's NYT report has made them change their policy)
Why do you describe concerns as "kneejerky misdirected anger at Microsoft".
Do you consider Microsoft's actions as ethical (or not an obstruction of justice) ?
[edit: to answer pvg's follow-up, in this context, by "obstruction of justice" I'm referring to Microsoft helping prosecutors commit a crime or Microsoft interfering with "proper" operations of a court]
I honestly don't know. Operating in such an environment ethically convoluted. I just don't think those ethical complexities are particularly important or worthy of handwringing when the problem at hand is 'the man comes and forcibly and arbitrarily takes your property'.
or not an obstruction of justice
I am not sure what you mean by 'obstruction of justice' in this context.
Not in the Baikal Wave case, specifically, although that doesn't really matter. Local lawyers representing Microsoft have, according to the report, participated in similar cases. I still think the 'Microsoft' part of this is largely irrelevant - it could have been anyone. In a corrupt country you can, unsurprisingly, find corrupt lawyers.
Again, I agree that it could have been anyone (I think Adobe took part in the recent raid of LG offices [or the authorities made them take part in this] -- http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gQtvHJ_pY...), but if it were Microsoft's lawyers, Microsoft is fully responsible for their actions.
Well, it gets a little tricky for the reasons you just described. If the 'authorities made' some company's representatives do something, it's not so perfectly clear the company is 'fully responsible' for their actions. It's a huge morass of ethical issues which automatically appears when a company does business in such places. The extremes of the spectrum are not doing business there at all and full-on collusion. Microsoft and I imagine just about all US technology companies in Russia likely fall somewhere in the middle. My point is that the debate about where precisely is not really all that interesting or important.
'Microsoft' or 'Adobe' part isn't that irrelevant - they've successfully lobbied the Russian authorities for the system of enforcement through unscheduled police "inspection" raids without probable cause. One can't be deemed innocent when he knowingly engages in collaboration with devil to obtain benefits of its powers.
Microsoft funds vigilante legal groups worldwide with a few partners. They've been doing this for at least a decade in my country. And this kind of unethical abuse is very common.
Note this PR release only says
> The policy is intended to last until 2012 but could be extended, he said.
I'm still highly skeptical of MS with these regards. And their statements sound very vague.
Microsoft funds vigilante legal groups worldwide with a few partners.
This may be the case but it just isn't the issue at hand. Microsoft had nothing to do with the local authorities' decision to harass and intimidate Baikal Wave. Just go back to the NYT article and copy it somewhere and replace 'Microsoft' with 'Smapti'. After re-reading it, what do you think the fundamental problem is -
a) Smapti, Inc is an imperfect global citizen
b) Russian authorities suppress legitimate political dissent
Russian authorities suppress legitimate political dissent by [ab]using the laws lobbied by Microsoft and the like, using the militia department created specifically to solve their problems. It's not like the authorities couldn't use other methods, but it doesn't mean that these "copyright holders" and their anti-piracy partnerships (BSA, НП ППП) didn't take part in creating this problem.
For skeptics, or those who's looking for more information, I'm talking about Civil Code of Russia, Part IV, in effect since January 1, 2008.
A lot of people talked about how it could be abused, and it seems, they were right.
BTW, while looking for information in English on this, I found this gem from http://www.ustr.gov/:
Poor enforcement of IPR [Intellectual Property Law] in the Russian Federation is a pervasive problem. In the November 2006 IPR Bilateral Agreement, Russia agreed to improve IPR enforcement while the United States agreed to step up IPR training programs and technical assistance for Russian customs and law enforcement officials. In 2009, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office conducted six IPR training programs for Russian police, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and customs officials and in total trained 149 Russian law enforcement officials. Russian Customs has drafted an “IPR Enforcement Handbook”, which will be used by all Russian Federal Customs Service officers. Additional training programs are planned for 2010.
>Russia is simply not a society governed by the rule of law. No well-intentioned Microsoft initiative or poignant NYT report is likely to change that.
Reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84MsRuC-1l8 ... does anyone else have any other interesting anecdotes, stories or links about "anarchy"/nepotism/realpolitik in international business?
I'm sure most people are (rightly) going to take Microsoft's word on this with a great deal of skepticism, but kudos to them for at least responding to it in a timely fashion and with what appears to be a responsible approach to the allegations.
Non profits and NGO get phenomenal deals in terms of licensing software from Microsoft, from my personal experience i dont know of any other company that offers anything similar.
The international reach needs to be improved though, as stated.
The whole incident started and (mostly, but not entirely) concluded months before the NYT published anything about it, in this fast-paced, linked up, tweeted world we live in.
There was already a response from Microsoft - their NGO discount program was in place, they claim to advise governments to focus enforcement efforts on the producers rather than consumers of pirated software and so on. It's great they've responded again and perhaps more stridently and publicly. But I have a hard time believing this sort of thing helps much with the fundamental problem which is an authoritarian and coercive government. And I think it's naive to expect that it would.
Obviously we can expect nothing from Russia except more of the same. Nevertheless, this kind of press moves the needle as evidenced by the prompt reply from Microsoft.
Since I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for about 15 years, and my entire professional career has been managing Linux and UNIX systems, I haven't really thought much about Microsoft and their licensing policies or anti-piracy practices...but, we recently had a customer demand an online printable "Certificate of Authenticity" for our software, and pointed to the Microsoft digital certificate of authenticity as the ideal example of such. His organization requires all software used to have such a certificate.
The truly nefarious aspect of this weird policy (which seems to exist, in lesser forms in other places, based on demands we've had for various specific bits of information on invoices) is that Open Source software is completely out of the running in the organizations that embrace such a policy. In our case, Virtualmin is an umbrella under which a couple dozen Open Source apps run, so I guess having the certificate for Virtualmin satisfies the policy (at least well enough for the IT guy to bluff his way through).
This isn't really comparable to political dissent being squashed, of course, but it gave me a pretty chilling view of Microsoft and their anti-piracy practices that I hadn't been aware of, and makes me far more likely to believe that MS would participate in using the thug power of Russian police in order to scare organizations and individuals out of pirating their products.
I'll also note that the BSA "report your neighbor" whistle-blower policy, which has been in effect for a couple of decades, has always reeked a little of the secret police and surveillance culture found in oppressive regimes.
It's actually our commercial software in question (we have a dual-licensed model for Virtualmin and Cloudmin, with the Open Source variant being under the GPL). I'm going to Photoshop something up for him, with the serial number and license key.
I'm tempted to pirate the Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity, and stick our numbers in there. There would be some sort of poetic something or other in that.
MS is just reaping what they saw as they worked extremely hard toward letting this demon out. Russian government wouldn't be defending your legal rights out of sheer generocity. The governments of all levels in Russia are now happily using anti-piracy law enforcement in addition to the old good sanitary, fire, tax audit inspections. It is a very Russian specific thing - the majority of laws are very good and very strong, while their application is a matter of government's selectively targeting will.
"A story in yesterday’s New York Times reports on anti-piracy enforcement actions in Russia that have been used for more nefarious purposes than protecting intellectual property rights."
It's good of Microsoft PR to classify protecting IP rights as nefarious, though somewhat less nefarious than actually using IP for supressing dissent. A step in the right direction, to be sure!
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but every time I read something tech related (google, facebook, apple etc) on the NYT, it's overblown sensationalism. Which is ok I guess except that the NYT always prides itself as the ultimate pro journalism and its website is always shown at google and apple web browsers demos as the reference in good journalism... BS.
Although NGOs would probably be better off with Opensource, Microsoft remains the market leader for Desktops and them willing to donate their products for a just cause does sound nice
I am not a user of their software and I generally dislike their business practices, but I must say that for this response they deserve credit and respect.
Russia is simply not a society governed by the rule of law. No well-intentioned Microsoft initiative or poignant NYT report is likely to change that.