Microsoft goes after 'career' pirates in court

In an effort to stamp out hard-core bootleggers--aka 'career' pirates--Microsoft has filed a total of 21 lawsuits in Federal courts spanning 14 states in the U.S. Perhaps lending credence to the question whether existing punishments are punitive, or perhaps simply reflecting the lucrative nature of piracy itself, eight of the firms sued have already been sued for software piracy by Microsoft. It is not known if these pirates peddled counterfeit Microsoft software that was purchased by knowing parties, or if they were pushed to an unsuspecting public. The Redmond-based company says that more than $8 billion of its software was counterfeited in the United States alone in 2007.

For more Microsoft's anti-piracy lawsuits:
- check out this iTnews article