The First Time In Spain That A Person Is Sentenced To Prison For Using Pirated Microsoft Products

30/05/2021

Microsoft products have been so widely-used in the world. Microsoft Windows for example, is the most widely-used operating system for desktop computers, and Microsoft Office has long been the most ubiquitous software suite in business

As a result, those products are among the most pirated in the world.

Microsoft has been fighting against piracy for almost all its life with a variety of success and failure.

Most of the time, large businesses have been prosecuted for using pirated software, and in some instances, individuals who copied and distributed pirated copies have also been trialed. But it was safe to say that no single person has ever gone to jail for using pirated Microsoft product for a small business that does not involve in software distribution at all.

Until this time.

A woman in Spain was sentenced to prison after she was using a pirated version of both Windows and Office for use at her business in the Madrid neighborhood of Vallecas. She said to have committed a crime for using the pirated Windows and Office on her business' two computers.

Aerial view of the Supreme Court of Spain in Madrid.
Aerial view of the Supreme Court of Spain in Madrid.

As reported by El Mundo, the second largest printed daily newspaper in Spain, the crime was first discovered in 2017.

At that time, the police found that two of the eight computers used in the woman's phone booth business were pirated.

Since then, the woman has appealed the court's decision for more than once, by a court and at the Provincial Court of Madrid. This time however, she couldn't.

As a result, the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced her to serve six months in prison. In addition, she is also required to pay a €3,600 fine, which does not yet include the amount she also have to pay to Microsoft to use the company's products.

In the sentence:

“The owner of the call shop economically exploits computers and their software without the use license that allows their commercial exploitation. It is a business activity, a call shop, which enables access to the internet from computers that house computer programs, hardware and software, which require licenses that allow their use, as they are documented works that are the creation of the spirit with a original content and protected by the ordinance."

This is the first time that such a sentence has been given to an individual in Spain.

With the first conviction happening, this could open future cases of this kind.

Before this, the court in the country has only dealt with cases that involved massively pirated file sharing, like movie distribution, for example.

But the woman was convicted because the Supreme Court of Spain itself has helped reformed of the country’s Penal Code.

It was back in 2015, when the country's law began to consider it illegal for a commercial exploitation of products and services that do not have a license.

Spain is also introducing tougher penalties for owners of websites that link to pirated versions of copyrighted material, after pressure from the U.S. over its piracy record.

Under the revised legislation introduced as part of a wider reform of the country's Penal Code, owners of businesses and websites that are found to be making money from owning or linking to pirated material can face prison sentences and the closure of their site.

GDP per capita in 2019
GDP per capita in 2019. The lower the purchasing power of people tend to cause a higher rate of software piracy.

As for Microsoft itself, the company may not pursue personal users of pirated copies of its products.

While Microsoft definitely lose a lot of money for having so many users who pirated its products, but software piracy is one of the biggest singular reason behind why Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are very popular among PC users.

Microsoft might not have deliberately used piracy to become the most dominant operating system for PCs in the world, but it absolutely helped the company to achieve that height.

By allowing users to get access to Windows and Office for free, means that software makers would be more biased to Microsoft, even when its products are highly-pirated, instead of Linux and some others that are free.

Among other reasons, Windows and Office also won the platform wars because the company support more software than the competition. Microsoft supports more software because it has more users.

And in the early days of Microsoft, this helped boost the company's products in the market.

It was even said that piracy was virtually unavoidable in the 1990s and the 2000s.

Beside Windows and Office, other popular product that is also ubiquitous and also widely-pirated, is Adobe Photoshop.