Mikhail Gorbachev asks Bill Gates and Microsoft for mercy for a Russian teacher accused of using pirated software
By: Captain Maverick
Published: Feb 6, 2007
Updated: Sep 2, 2010
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the former Soviet Union, asked Bill Gates to intercede on behalf of a Russian school teacher who is accused of using pirated Microsoft software in his classroom. Gorbachev stated in an open letter to Bill Gates, that the teacher, Alexander Ponosov, from a remote village in the Urals, should be shown mercy because he did not know he was committing a crime.
Gorbachev said that he is a teacher who has dedicated his life to the education of children and who receives a modest salary that does not bear comparison with the salaries of even regular staff at Microsoft, is threatened with detention in Siberian prison camps. He further said that mercy would make all in Russia more enthusiastic about Microsoft products.
The prosecutors have accused Ponosov of violating Microsoft's intellectual property laws by using computers in his school that contained unlicensed copies of Microsoft software. Ponosov is the headmaster of a middle school in a remote village in the Urals. At the same time, Russia has been mounting a high-profile crackdown on all sorts of piracy in their efforts to join the World Trade Organization.
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