When I began on this strange odyssey of following #rustechdel and becoming involved on the debate about the human rights issues and groups discussed related to this trip, and I took on the Microsoft RU evangelist Vladimir Gabriel on what I felt were a "too vegetarian" set of NGOs benefiting from the Russian Microsoft's program for free software, I had no idea that this was going to escalate not only to a Twitter fight, but something far more serious. It seems that local human rights groups are claiming that representatives of Microsoft RU are involved in harassing provincial NGOs, exploiting claims of software piracy to shut down critical local NGOs.

I was astounded to find out this information, which I received from a Moscow human rights activist from a group I have long worked with and trusted. I began mailing out links to my blog and to the Microsoft RU NGO site, urging people to apply for the free software program, and asking some who appeared to have had problems if they could reapply or explain the difficulties they were having.

I never imagined something involving such an abuse of power like this could be involved. Respected Moscow human rights advocates have researched these cases and are now in the process of coordinating a summary of the cases and an appeal to the Microsoft headquarters in the U.S. to investigate (it would be helpful to get advice about where in the vastness of Microsoft this letter should be directed).

The Russian activists — and any of us involved in civic activism — wonder how on earth small NGOs charged with piracy (if that's even true) could be facing actual imprisonment on such charges (which are not yet proven). Is it really possible that Microsoft would stand by while local representatives try to have people found merely with copies of Windows on their computer sent to jail?

Worse, when the Russian human rights researchers saw the cases, they began to wonder if software was really the issue. They began to question whether in fact the software charge was just a ruse to persecute local groups that were challenging corrupt government, using a facile claim to shut them down.

One of the cases involves a youth activist named Anastasiya Denisova in Krasnodar which another human rights defender Dmitry Markov has blogged about here in Russian and who has been supported by other human rights activists.

On the one hand, Microsoft RU does have a program to provide NGOs with free software — and I'm obviously not the only one who has found the list of the NGOs rather vegetarian; Russian activists are even more critical. Yet on the other hand, Microsoft representatives in Russia are cooperating with local bureaucrats to shut down disliked civic groups.

The activists point out that Microsoft RU's free software program happened to begin after a round of court cases against local NGOs and independent newspapers in which the "software piracy" card was played, often with absurd claims of thousands of dollars of damage, resulting in a newspaper or group being crippled or closed. For example the Samara edition of Novaya Gazeta was shuttered, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, when local authorities pressed charges that the critical editor, Sergei Kurt-Adzhiev, was guilty of "software counterfeit" under the Russian criminal code.

"“The authorities in Samara have effectively silenced an independent
newspaper that dared to cover an opposition party campaign in an
election year,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in 2007. The indictment against Kurt-Adzhiyev claims that U.S. software giant
Microsoft and a local software company suffered damages worth 132,409
Russian rubles (US$5,395) because of the editor’s actions, Novaya Gazeta reported.

NGOs and independent press criticized Microsoft RU for such heavy-handed tactics, especially given that the non-state organizations in question were unable to afford the costly Windows licenses, and the damages claimed were exaggerated — worse, the charges seemed more about shutting up local coverage of issues like the campaign of controversial political agitator and chess champion Gary Kasparov than really about copyright.

I'll pause here for a station break and say that I fully support the payment of software license fees, and I'm one of the few chumps in my neighbourhood of computer doctors and geeks who has in the past actually paid more than $100 for my MS Word license, after suffering the bugs and lack of helpdesking from said using unlawful copies of said docs and geeks. I believe in copyright, patents, and paying for licenses, and am a big critic of the opensource software movement, in fact. I also think that Microsoft's program for NGOs to enable them to get free or low-cost software is the answer to the problem of non-profits making use of unlawful copies. And I can't imagine why possession of even a few multiple copies of Windows in one's office could possibly ever be characterized as $5000 in damages, much less qualifications for a jail term. Something is very wrong here.

I'll add another advertisement for the need for further research by journalists and lawyers here. I make no claims about the actual activities of these groups, and no, Vladimir, I'm not interested in apologizing for or supporting groups that incite crime or break laws — as long as we can determine that these are *just* laws and as long as these cases are fairly prosecuted. Trumping up a case on "counterfeit" charges seems far too easy in Russia, and the Russian criminal justice system, even with some reforms, is notorious for horrendous violations of due process, intimidation of lawyers, and even torture of suspects. The tens of thousands of cases from Russia appealing to the European Court of Human Rights are evidence of this, as well as the many conclusions from OSCE, the UN's treaty bodies, the Council of Europe, and so on all bear witness to these known facts.

The activists also wondered about the bona fides of the lawyer who claimed he had a blanket power of attorney from Microsoft to launch cases like this in Russia. That set the activists to scratching their heads — do the Americans realize what they've done? Is this really how they operate? The document submitted appears to provide the bearer with the right to represent Microsoft's interests in all countries, the right to transfer this right, and the right to collect damages from court cases (!). This seems like an awfully loaded weapon to be putting into anyone's hands in the corrupt context of Russia.

The bona fides of the attorney appear to be of the type familiar to anyone who has tried to legalize paperwork involving any Russian entity (we used to call such paperwork an aptekyorsky vyzov, to indicate how silly it was that we paid a dollar to a pharmacy clerk in New York with a notary stamp to stamp merely that we had presented identification for a signature…and then taking this silly thing 3 more levels up to city, state, and federal bureaucrats…merely to certify the certification).

Russia is a country of pyramids of bureaucrats who demand stamps and seals and signatures at each level of the bureaucracy, going to the top, gaining *permission* to engage in this or that business. There isn't such an equivalent in the U.S. bureaucracy, so a mechanism has developed that sort of mimics the Russian system and even produces a pretty wax seal at the end: you get a notary signature; you get confirmation that that notary is licensed by your state; you get conformation from the State Department that that state license to license notaries is licensed — a matryoshka doll of seals and signatures that seems to work to assuage the Russian bureaucrats, even though, of course, permission for a business or non-profit to act is not what has been given by Washington, only the confirmation of a confirmation's confirmation.

And in this case, I'm fairly certain that Microsoft USA never intended this "power of attorney" to be misused in this fashion. And there's some easy remedies: they can review the documentation and chain of permissions; and they can merely fax inquiries, on their stationery, not only to Microsoft RU but to Samara and Krasnodar authorities, merely asking for information. That alone might have a near-magic effect of scuttling some of the cockroaches attached to a sinister case like this — but it may not be enough, and a real attested attorney might ultimately have to get involved. The goal of stopping Russian piracy of software is laudable and urgent, but obviously the way to do this is not to attack a small newspaper or civic group in the provinces, the targets have to be bigger fish — and, due process must be ensured, to guarantee that software theft isn't a mere pretext for political action.

I'll say this: a case like this is above my pay grade, so to speak, as a blogger. I don't have the investigative journalistic capacity or travel readiness to go to Krasnodar and interview the suspects and all parties concerned. I can only try to bring this case to the attention of others in the Western media and various think-tanks concerned with researching Russian affairs.

This is a type of case that likely will prove too hard to solve for local human rights groups and even the international human rights groups who try to help. No doubt there are some very big personages involved in setting up Microsoft RU, and such personages may go all the way to the top, I have no idea. I can see where Russia, one of the great homelands of software piracy, hacking, and virus destruction in the world, is a challenging environment for Microsoft Central, and they may chose to deal with the problem of Russian crime by getting "their Russians" to protect them against "other Russians" and may have grown fiercely protective of them — and may look the other way if they occasionally help out some local crony to shut down some noisy little newspaper blabbing about challenges to Putin.

Even so, those in #rustechdel and in and around the entire Russian Silicon Valley project, with its already very dubious theses of suppressing freedom of intellectual inquiry and speech, should be asking their Russian counterparts about these cases and demanding some credible answers.