Three and a half years for software piracy? That seems a bit excessive.......

Well, if they had pirated Vista, nobody would have cared - it's not worth pirating.

Ooooh, snap!

7 looks good, though. I was in teh b3ta

Sorry. I couldn't help myself with the bad grammaticals and whatsits.

I'm glad their targeting the big guys rather than the cogs.  I personally think this is the only way to stop piracy. Attacking the little guy does nothing. No amount of targeting "Regular joe the pirate" is ever going to be a) worth the money of the court costs b ) have any effect on its prevalance.

Although not a massive fan of Microsoft, I'm glad jucitice is being done.

I heard that software piracy is rampant in China. I was told by a reliable source that even the government computers run hacked copies of software.

I wonder if the Judge that handed down the sentence has a legit copy of Windows on his PC.

Yeah....but they're getting lotsa Chinese food at the same time....so it's not all bad.

China is just making a statement
The US has been onto China for a long while to stop software piracy. It took them years to do anything about it. Don't expect the Chinese Government to go out their way any time in the future.

United States of America.

Seriously, this is exactly where it's most widespread at the source (they send much more than what they receive!); as hinted about here!

Forget the lowest ranking of 30%, it's ALL about proxy tricks and server locations.

It's about time pirates got what was coming to them. Well done China

3.5 years will really fry their noodles...

They should count themselves lucky. People over there have been executed for less......

They knowingly hacked a company's liscenced product and distributed it, doing a crazy amount of damage to Microsoft's budget.  You're stealing from a LOT of people that way, and helping a lot of other people steal as well.  Considering the version is still out there, 3.5 years seems lax.

That was just too funny.

So we busting their chops (sticks) for pirating software. Does this mean Window 7 may be cheaper by the time it's released?

Maybe they'll be chained at the ankle wearing white suits with black stripes with a white and black striped hat swinging a sledge hammer at some rocks. That should be interesting.

I have no sympathy for these guys and cannot care that they spend time in jail. Pirating stuff yourself is wrong, but I can understand some of it (for example to protest against some business models). However pirating and then making a vulgar profit from it is plain crime in my book.

Actually peps 3.5 years is rather short term. Plus the fines where easily paid. Those guys made a lot more than that and got away with it. Problem is that they did it to just make a statement. My point of view on that is "who else is getting away with it via gov. protection as such?"

It is sad what people will do now days to make a buck. Then they still bye it and doing so pass it on to you. Would be really nice if they would be more involved and learn to do things right. That is too easy though.

That and Microsoft is really going the miles with people by giving so much software away. Sure lots do not see it that way. But it is true if you examine the facts. So why go to a pirate to get anything. It damages you and the company you are getting the software from or that is suppose to be getting it from. Thus as one person has mentioned here about prices and such. I'm really glad those prices do not get too much influence by such things as of yet. But who knows if they did? What would be the difference?

This kind of goes with any software company. If things where better then I'm sure pricing would be better.

If those pirates would of been here they would of got a bigger fine and more time in jail.

United States is next? Well it has already been doing such for a long time now! I would like to see those Russian websites and others in EU hosting such begin to take better control. But it is always just a statement game. " We got this guy for ya! " Not hey here is the whole bunch and we stopped it completely. That is the aim here in the States thus far. Those other countries just want to get along and do what they fell like they have to do to make things look good enough is all.

I say it is not good enough!

I don't see how fining a company $0.12 per illegal download of Windows can be considered a serious punishment.

All said, it's better than fining an individual $20,000 per illegal song download as the US justice system seems happy to do, but both of those solutions are pretty stupid.