PC Welt, the German computer magazine, claims that Microsoft has shipped its popular Windows Media Player with sound files that are edited with an illegal copy of SoundForge, a commercially available Sony program for manipulating audio.
In one of the WAV files PC Welt discovered a reference to SoundForge 4.5 and a user called ‘Deepz0ne’, who happens to be one of the founders of an audio software cracking group called Radium.
It is unclear if Microsoft took the file off of a royalty-free sound effects library, outsourced its sound editing to someone with an illegal copy or used a warez version of SoundForge itself.
However, it wouldn’t be first first such incident to cause embarrassment. Last year Microsoft acknowledged two Nazi symbols were inadvertently included in the “Bookshelf Symbol 7″ font that shipped with Microsoft Office 2003. The company immediately offered tools to replace the offending characters.
In a heated discussion at Slashdot, some readers demanded “homeland security on the case ASAP”. Other verdicts were somewhat milder: “Even Microsoft has no use for MS Sound Editor.” ®
PC Welt
LanWar Forum
The Register
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