Well, that certainly got your attention, didn’t it? While German magazine PC-WELT broke the story in mid-November of last year, I’m surprised that it hasn’t gotten more press coverage. PC-WELT reports that Microsoft used an illegal copy of SoundForge 4.5 for editing Wave files shipped with Windows Media Player.

Microsoft has issued two official statements, one from Microsoft Deutschland, and the second in English from BetaNews by Erin Cullen, Lead Product Manager of the Windows Consumer Division:

It bears mentioning that Microsoft has licensed copies of all software used by the User Assistance teams in building these tours (both in past and present). Microsoft has copyright to use the .wav file in question and did not use a cracked version of this software in development of the tour in Windows XP.

While I’m sure that Cullen’s statement is entirely true, the fact still remains that somewhere in the course of production, a cracked copy of Sound Forge 4.5 was utilitized. And regardless of whether or not the product in question was licensed, this is an embarrassing oversight on the part of the software giant.

If you’re running Windows XP, you can actually verify this yourself by entering the following directory and opening any one of the nine audio files in that folder in any text editor, such as Notepad:

%SYSTEMROOT%\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav

On the last line, you’ll see the relevant metadata, and things suddenly get much more interesting:

LISTB INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG 
   Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5

Deepz0ne is a member of Radium, a world-wide software piracy group whose primary goal is to crack and release audio applications. Radium was intentionally disbanded in 2001 to avoid the Business Software Alliance, who had them listed as their number one target. Ironically enough, Microsoft is also a member of the BSA. Just goes to show that sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction.