Summary: Corbis fraud is now a fact (Bill Gates is the sole owner of Corbis); Alexey Karetnikov from Microsoft is allegedly a Russian spy

THIS bit of news is not about the Gates Foundation, which is a patents-loving/hoarding operation and image/reputation laundering disguised as a tax-exempt charity. This quick post is actually about this new report from Forbes. "Start-Up Goes Public On Corbis Fraud, Starring Bill Gates," says the headline.

It's a case of David vs. Goliath and, pebble in hand, now David is talking to the press. The David in this case is Infoflows, a six-person company in the Seattle area that successfully sued stock photography company Corbis and won a $20 million judgment against Corbis early this year. Now, Infoflows has decided to go public with its side of the story.

Bill Gates has a starring role in Infoflow's story. The company, made up mostly of former Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) employees, was launched to form a technology that would identify digital objects. Corbis first entered into an agreement with Infoflows around 2005, feeding information it gleaned from that relationship to an outside patent counsel, according to court documents. Corbis terminated the agreement in 2006, days after receiving key software designs from Infoflows. Article Controls

A King County, Wash., superior court jury found in January 2010 that Corbis, which is solely owned by Bill Gates, fraudulently entered into a business relationship with Infoflows and then developed the company's ideas into a service for identifying objects in its digital photo collection.

This is coming from the same guy who, according to OpenBytes, is now busy getting people "addicted", just like those pharmaceutical giants he invests billions of dollars in and publicly promotes.

Lets begin by reminding ourselves of two comments made by Bill Gates - you might have heard of him, he is/was? quite influential at Microsoft. ;)

It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

Read those sentences a few times, take a deep breath and then consider the companies mentioned in the last article. hypocrisy? or maybe underhanded tactics to allow the spread of Microsoft wares until such time as they decide to collect? – I hope everyone can forgive me for thinking this sounds very much like the drug dealer who gives the first few “hits” for free, safe in the knowledge that an addict will keep coming back.

I digress (as is my want) and this article is about the contact I have had from some of the companies/individuals who were named on the Microsoft hit list. It certainly makes interesting reading and certainly (in the cases Ive seen) not a case of selling cracked copies of Windows 7, its more a licensing agreement issue when selling refurbed PC’s as a business. Lets make something clear here, the hit list that has been published (although some sources would suggest otherwise) is not a list of people caught selling copies of Windows 7. As the links that follow will show, this is Microsoft cashing in on alleged licensing issues, in particular (in the example) a business selling on a refurbished PC. This is no “Knock off Nigel”.

There was one company in particular who contacted me from the hit list linked in the previous article. For arguments sake we will call them Company X, as you will see, from theirs (and other supporting comments from others) there is a genuine fear of retaliation for speaking out against the “Mighty Microsoft”. I however have no such fear in regards to my comments and if Microsoft feel the need to ever take legal action over my words, I would welcome it.

It all fits together. Poor ethics and dishonesty about counterfeiting make up the attitudinal issue we witness to this date.

Jokingly, Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat suggests a "conspiracy". A few days ago he wrote: "One of the russian spies worked at MSFT and now Russia gets the sources of Win7 - coincidence? ;-) "

Russia has access to the source code and Alexey Karetnikov is now deported. It probably is just a coincidence though.

Immigration deports Alexey Karetnikov: Microsoft engineer, alleged Russian spy, loyal Facebook user

[...]

The curious case of the Russian spies grows, well, curiouser, as the Washington Post reports that a Microsoft Software Design Engineer named Alexey Karetnikov has recently been ordered out of the country for "immigration violations." According to a government source, Karetnikov had "just set up shop," (spy shop, that is) and the immigration charges were technicalities used to get him out of the country quickly (and without an annoying trial).

We will probably return to this at a later stage (still catching up with news that was missed during absence). ⬆

"In honor of the event, Pam Edstrom, who had since left Microsoft to cofound her own agency, Waggener Edstrom, and handle Microsoft's PR from the outside, sponsored a "Windows Roast." Gathered at the Alexis Park Resort in Las Vegas, Gates and Ballmer made fun of themselves and not so subtly apologized for the Windows delays. "To Dream the Impossible Dream" was the theme song playing in the background. With three hundred analysts and members of the press invited to these festivities where Gates and Ballmer let it all hang out, it was another coup for "Gates's Keeper." Gates joked that Ballmer had insisted, " 'We just gotta cut features.' He came up with this idea that we could rename this thing Microsoft Window—and we would have shipped that thing a long time ago."

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by Pam's daughter