5 years ago… Landmark piracy arrest announced

05.07.1999: Thailand's intellectual property court has delivered a landmark verdict in the war against software piracy, by handing down an 18 month prison sentence to the owner of a Bangkok shop selling counterfeit CD-ROMs.

Yothin Krutpong won the dubious honour of being the first Thai software pirate to be put behind bars. In addition to the 18 month unconditional sentence, he was fined over £14,000 for selling over 350 counterfeit CD-ROMs at his store, located in a downtown computer mall in Bangkok.

The decision drops a bomb on an illicit business sector that has grown increasingly bold in recent years, despite rising fines and sustained efforts to educate the public away from counterfeit products.

05.07.2004: The arrests of software pirates are still the exception rather than the rule - in most Asian countries, pirate copies account for over 90 per cent of all software in circulation and counterfeit copies of Microsoft's Longhorn were found on sale in Malaysia for $1.58.

The police charged with tracking down and bringing the pirates to justice are still under-resourced and fighting an uphill struggle in a country where buying legal software is beyond the means of the overwhelming majority of the country.

One possible solution that's come to light in recent times is simply companies like Microsoft starting to cut their prices. In his recent tour of the region, Bill Gates himself was showing off stripped-down versions of Windows for the Thai and Malaysian market. China, however, was not so lucky.