Why You Should Run Numbers on Stories Like This

Typical headline, Microsoft, Feds, and Chinese authorities seize $2bn in pirated software. It's a typical lie. One that could be revealed in 10 minutes with paper and pencil, 5 minutes with a calculator.

Both software and drug busts suffer from the same inflated reporting.

Assuming Microsoft products have a value of $500 each, which is generous considering discounts, site licenses, bulk discounts, etc, that would say that they seized 4 million, that's right 4 followed by 6 zeros copies of their software.

A CD is about 1-½ mm thick, 4 million would stack over 3-½ miles high.

My guess is that they are using the bogus $50-100K/copy number that comes up in copyright cases.

It's like those drug busts during my college days, they would quote a street value for the pot that was 10-20x what I paid retail.