Spanish police arrest 14 for Microsoft piracy

Spanish police arrested 14 people on charges of intellectual piracy Thursday after discovering 3,000 forged copies of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Professional Edition software along with forged certificates of authentication.

The forged certificates are the first to be discovered for Windows XP Professional Edition and are believed to have been fabricated in the country, according to Microsoft Spain.

The software and more than 4,000 forged certificates were located in the north eastern city of San Sebastián. Some of the software was packaged with a certificate and manual, constituting a "pack" that could be sold for between €279 ($350) and €414, Microsoft said.

All together, Microsoft estimated that the pirated goods could have sold for as much as €1.2 million on the open market.

Spain has one of the highest incidences of software piracy in Western Europe after Greece, the software giant said, citing data from the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

The piracy raid conducted Thursday was particularly worrying since the software found was accompanied by forged certificates that would make the goods appear genuine to consumers, Microsoft said.

The BSA is currently working with Spain's Science and Technology Ministry on a campaign to raise awareness about the problem of piracy, saying that it is having a debilitating effect on the country's economy.