I was rather surprised this morning to read that the Windows Media Player uses audio (WAV) files created with cracked software by Radium (an audio software cracking/warez collective).

On Windows XP, if you go to your "C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav" directory, and open up one of the wav files (in Notepad or a hex viewer), at the bottom of each file you will notice the last line contains a watermark line identifying the program that created the file. "LISTR INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5"

For all the files in this directory, the watermark refers to a pirated version of Sound Forge 4.5, cracked by DeepzOne.

Whether these [public domain?] files were created with cracked software by some third party and then simply used by a Microsoft developer, or whether Microsoft staff actually have cracked copies of Sound Forge on company machines, it is quite clear that Microsoft is responsible for breaking their own laws and they are liable for the actions of their employees. This is especially notable for the scale at which they distribute their Media Player.

Consider that Microsoft, a founding member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), employs a mini-battalion of IP lawyers and auditors that guilty-until-proven-innocent-ly enforce their Intellectual Property rights, hypocritically the only rights that appear to matter.