James Delahunty
15 Feb 2007 14:12
A Russian piracy case that sparked attention even from President Vladamir Putin was thrown out by a court in Perm, some 1000km east of Moscow. The case had been brought against Alexander Ponosov, a headteacher, for allegedly installing pirated copies of Microsoft's Windows operating systems on 12 school computers. Posonov had claimed that he didn't know the software was pirated when the computers were bought.
The court dismissed the case today, referring to it as "trivial". "We're off to drink champagne now," Mr Ponosov told the Associated Press. "Of course, it was trivial." Industry experts rank Russia as second only to China for use of illegal software. Posonov told the BBC that the case was brought against him by Russian prosecutors, and that he was unaware of any Microsoft claims against him.
Source:
BBC News