14 DAY TRIAL // Cori Hartje, director of the Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative was caught buying and handling pirated copies of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System on more than one occasion. Alex Kochis, a senior licensing manager with the Windows Genuine Advantage team has confirmed that Hartje was involved in transactions with pirated materials, including Microsoft latest operating system and the 2007 version of the company's productivity suite.
"A colleague and friend of mine was traveling in Brazil recently and during her trip she took a few minutes to see what software was easily available on the streets of Sao Paulo. While Windows Vista was among the counterfeits available it was cheaper (about $5 vs $10 for other software titles) because the vendor said it 'might expire'," Kochis revealed in the past, a week after Windows Vista hit the shelves.
But before you get all worked up, you might want to know that buying pirated software is part of the Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative director's job description. In fact Hartje makes no secret out of the fact that she is constantly dealing with pirated materials: "For instance, on a recent trip to South America, we met a street vendor who had a copy of Windows Vista that included an inkjet-printed package, obviously counterfeit. He said, "This isn't going to work very long because Microsoft is going to shut this key off and you won't be able to activate it. But you can use it for a trial." This was eight days after the business launch of Windows Vista to volume licensing customers in the first part of December," she confessed at the end of March 2007.
But what Hartje failed to mention was that she managed to spend some of the hard earned Microsoft money on pirated Microsoft software, as part of the evidence gathering process, just as you can see in the adjacent image courtesy of BNET.