Symantec awarded $21 million award against Chinese Software Pirates

On Christmas Eve, Symantec announced a legal victory against Chinese pirates selling their cloned software at super cheap prices.

Please note, I stole the super cheap description from Symantec's video called, The 12 days of Christmas Spam." The super cheap tag can either refer to price, or the quality of counterfeit software (personal thought).

From the press release:

Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced that it was awarded $21 million in damages against a large network of distributors selling counterfeit Symantec software.

The judgments were handed down by the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, CA in favor of Symantec against ANYI, SILI Inc., Mark Ma, Mike Lee, John Zhang, Yee Sha, and related defendants.

"Our customers are the real winners as a result of this case," said Scott Minden, director, Symantec Legal department. "A judgment like this is a crippling blow against these particular syndicates and will drive them even further underground, making it more difficult for them to sell directly to unsuspecting users. It complicates their ability to operate behind the guise as legitimate businesses."

The investigation conducted by Symantec in collusion with the FBI and Chinese authorities also led to some criminal charges being filed in China.

It appears that this particular case involved pirated software being made to appear as if it was the real deal. According to industry experts, the counterfeiting problem has increased 10,000 percent in recent history.

The software industry alone estimates it loses $40 billion a year because of pirated software. I wonder how many jobs this equates to?

Pirated (super cheap software) is also hawked via the millions (billions?) of spam e-mails attacking our in boxes in record amounts. Recently, Symantec issued a report based on the spam data they monitor revealing that over the current holiday season 71percent of all e-mail sent is spam.

Counterfeit software also can contain malware (malicious software), which can lead to your system becoming a zombie (part of a botnet to facilitate more spam) and even steal your personal and financial details. These details are then used to steal money either from you directly, or to steal money from financial institutions.

I'm sometimes amazed how a lot of current criminal activity ties in together via the digital world. All the average person needs to do is to watch all the spam messages they get and consider all the different schemes that are behind them. The schemes are nothing new, but the digital age has enabled criminals to reach out to more people than ever before.

Either this is occurring naturally, or someone pretty organized people are running operations along the lines of major corporations?

Besides the more personal dangers of buying pirated software, there is a lot of evidence the activity is making a lot of money for organized crime, rogue governments and terrorist groups, alike.

Press release from Symantec, here.

Consumers Union launches a holiday campaign against unsafe products!

Some might say that the global economy has ushered in an era of corporate irresponsibility. Daily, we discover that certain corporations are distributing goods that pose a clear and present danger to our safety.

Many of us are also wondering if certain politicans have let us down on this matter.

After all, how could only 15 inspectors be assigned to oversee 200 million containers of goods being shipped into the country every year?

Consumers Union, who is the non profit right arm of Consumer Reports has launched a major campaign to let Congress know the public is sick and tired of corporate irresponsibility in the global economy.

With Black Friday and holiday season upon us, they are focusing on dangerous products being passed on to our children with a campaign called, "Not in my cart."

You can see that this campaign is all about in a parody about this matter. To view the parody, click on the picture below:



Also included in the video is information, where to let Congress know how you feel about this!

To sum up what the parody is about, Consumers Union writes:

We hope you enjoyed our parody, but the truth is that our system for keeping food and products safe is in serious need of repair.

This year, more than 25 million toys have been recalled, many for dangerous lead paint.

80% of toys are made in China.

The agency responsible for the safety of more than 15,000 products has only 15 inspectors at ports nationwide.

The FDA inspects only about 1% of imported food.

Despite the severely underfunded staff of FDA Inspectors, Consumers Union has made it a little easier to keep track of all the recalls, here.

The sheer number of them is enough to scare just about anyone!