Microsoft Crosses Swords With Pirates

[p2p rules]

At a crime lab in Dublin, Microsoft's (MSFT) Donal Keating uses a custom-built microscope to take 72 high-resolution images of a counterfeit software disc. Just as police use ballistics to match bullets to a suspect's gun, Keating, the company's senior forensics manager, will use the abrasions and grooves on the stacking ring, a raised ridge around the disc's center, to match it to other fakes. He'll then try to trace the counterfeit disc to the factory and the crime syndicate that produced it.

The high-tech probing is part of a campaign by the world's largest software maker to vanquish counterfeiters. Microsoft employs 75 investigators, lawyers, and analysts - many with experience in narcotics and Mafia cases - in nine labs around the world. They're armed with maps that help pinpoint where suspect products are bought or seized by law enforcement, software that identifies digital fingerprints on discs, and a program that scours the Web for downloadable fakes.

businessweek.com