The same day that Microsoft launched its global "Anti Piracy Day" the crazy "pirates" from Sweden that run the Pirate Bay, self defined as the "World's largest BitTorrent tracker" decided to scoff at the software giant's initiative.
Visitors to the tracker quickly found the page "did a Google" and changed its logo to celebrate the special day in their own humorous way. Its logo above the search field changed to that famous Bill Gates 1970s "Mug Shot", with the caption "Bill Gates made me do it", followed by "Microsoft Anti-Piracy Day, Oct 21".
That new logo links to a search request on the site with "Microsoft" as a search string, where you can see all of the Redmond firm's software products currently listed on the tracker and available for download from other BitTorent users, including Office 2007 Enterprise, Vista Ultimate with integrated Service Pack 1, and more.
Clearly the Pirate Bay guys are emboldened and defiant, in addition to insanely humorous. We guess Microsoft's own Anti-Piracy experts won't be too happy. The software giant says that piracy "equals lost wages, lost jobs, and unfair competition" and admits that "some companies" - without detailing which ones - must "devote resources to anti-piracy technology, ultimately slowing down the development of better products and services". If this is a reference to Microsoft's own WGA "Windows Genuine Advantage" and the Vista SNAFU, we don't know.
The Pirate Bay torrent tracker has been involved in legal imbroglios several times, including a raid of its servers by the police, but so far remains afloat. It routinely receives letters from law firms representing software companies - often invoking the DMCA, a U.S. law - which the administrators are often more than happy to publish and mock up with their own reply letters on the site's own "legal threats" section.
A group of Swedes even launched a few years ago a Pirate "Political Party" with the message that "corporations are engaging in racketeering in the developing world and a few power hungry individuals and greedy corporate entities are infringing on privacy and integrity".
So far Microsoft has not responded to the Pirate Bay's mocking of its laudable and good-spirited efforts.