Summary: Microsoft pays compensation to more victims of its illegal practices, but illegal practices continue to this date, leading to even more penalties

Microsoft is still a felonious company, but some of its offences it pays for many, many years after the crimes. In Arizona, for example, Microsoft was pressured to eventually pay back in June and this is finally finalised only in December:

Microsoft will pay more than $4.4 million to Arizona government agencies after settling an antitrust lawsuit in which the company was accused of overcharging for Office software and the MS/DOS operating system.

The Daisy Mountain Fire District sued Microsoft one year ago, alleging the software superpower abused its monopoly power. In the class action, the fire district represented all Arizona state and local agencies that bought Microsoft operating systems and applications between May 1994 and December 2008. Microsoft denied liability.

More fines are directed at Microsoft for present abuses that we wrote about last week. The short story is that Microsoft is harassing defendants whom it accuses of 'piracy' (it is definitely not piracy), despite the fact that Bill Gates said that "it's easier for our software to compete with [GNU/]Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."

The Delhi High Court has fined Microsoft for harassing alleged software pirates by taking them to court in the national capitol, instead of the cities where the crimes had supposedly occurred. According to the ruling, using money as a power tool is not condoned without repercussions.

We have written many posts about why Microsoft is lying about this so-called 'piracy'. Among them:

• Microsoft's Crocodile Tears
• When a Convicted Criminal Accuses Others of Crime
• Microsoft Contradicts the BSA While the BSA Attacks Users of Proprietary Software
• Microsoft Makes Even the MPAA/RIAA Look Good by Starting a War on Customers, Vendors
• Microsoft Uses Propaganda to Acquire ICT in Nigeria and Abu Dhabi
• Antitrust Complaint About Microsoft, a So-called 'Pirate'
• Microsoft Insults the People of China, Oman, the Newly-elected President

This week too there is more of that Microsoft propaganda about 'piracy' in the Middle East and in India. Wait, what about Somalia? Microsoft adds fire to this tired propaganda by spinning it as "by popular demand", so to speak. Microsoft pretends that by attacking its own customers and distributors it is just doing what customers ask for, which is probably a lie.

Redmond claims people are turning themselves in

Software giant Microsoft claims that it has launched an initiative to curb software piracy because its own customers have asked it to take action.

That's hilarious. That's just rich. But either way, GNU/Linux advocates hope that Microsoft cracks down on those so-called 'pirates' really, really hard. It advocates GNU/Linux. ⬆