Windows Media Player sound files 'edited with warez' [printer-friendly] • The Register

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/13/wmp_sound_warez_claim/

Windows Media Player sound files 'edited with warez'

PC Welt looks under the hood

Posted in Developer, 13th November 2004 15:02 GMT

PC Welt, the German computer magazine, claims (http://www.pcwelt.de/news/software/104785/index1.html) 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 (http://www.readthefuckingmanual.info/index.php?fuseAction=articleDetail&article_id=48&rubric_id=33).

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 (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/12/12/microsoft.swastika.reut) 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 (http://slashdot.org/articles/04/11/13/0036243.shtml?tid=133&tid=201&tid=109&tid=12) 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." ®

Windows Media Player sound files 'edited with warez'

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