microsoft and software piracy: oops

This isn't new-news (it's about 3 weeks old), but is still surprising enough that I'm blogging it now: Patroklos notes that Microsoft has used a cracked version of the application Sound Forge to create some of the media files in Windows XP. Patroklos has a screenshot there, I verified it myself in my own copy of Windows XP. To check it, just open any of the WAV files present under C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav and go to the end, you'll see the "Deepz0ne" signature that marks the source app as cracked. This definitely seems to be what it appears.

Oops.

I'm sure that MS will fix this quickly, when an organization is so large, things like these are probably bound to happen. Still, it doesn't look good. If Microsoft itself can't properly enforce licensing with its own employees and contractors (though, admittedly, in a small scale, considering the size of its products), it weakens their own ability to condemn it and prosecute it.

I'm sure there's a lot more fortune-cookie-wisdom that could be expounded from this incident but it's too early in the day, so I'll leave it at that. :)