Microsoft announced in a blog entry "the largest bust of counterfeit software manufacturing or distribution ever."

A lot of pirated Windows Vista was sold by the gang that got busted. The main point of the blog is to celebrate the role of WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage, the copy protection in Windows). People who bought the pirated copies tried to activate them and failed. They called up Microsoft to find out what happened and sent in their disks as part of the process. Forensics using this information helped to find the pirates.

So the blog also expresses gratitude to these users who are, as it says, victims of the piracy and helped to bring it down. Some of them will qualify for free genuine copies.