Did you know Microsoft was convicted of software piracy last year by a French court? Not many people do. The Commercial Court of Nanterre fined Microsoft 3 million francs because it illegally included another company's proprietary source code in SoftImage 3D, a top-of-the-line animation package.

The only authoritative report on the event was written by Lionel Berthomier and first published in the French paper, Le Monde Informatique. An English version was reprinted at PCWorldMalta on November 28, 2001 -- about two months after the court's decision. Both Le Monde Informatique and PCWorldMalta are affiliated with IDG, the parent of InfoWorld and LinuxWorld. Yet, neither of these sites published a word about Microsoft's conviction on September 27, 2001. And nobody else in the segment of the tech media that's traditionally anti-Microsoft picked up the story, either -- not Slashdot, nor LinuxToday, nor NewsForge. Neither did any of the mainstream tech outlets. Nobody noticed this news. Nobody except Peruvian congressman Edgar David Villanueva Nu�ez.