28 November 2006 17:33 GMT / By Amber Maitland
And now, a story from the category, "strange but true". Microsoft is being sued by a tiny ethnic group in Chile because the company has translated Windows into their language.The Mapuche claim that Microsoft are violating their heritage by daring to translate Windows into Mapuzugun without permission. The lawsuit raises the question over whether a language can every be copyrighted or "owned".
Microsoft innocently believed that by translating the software into the language, spoken by a tribe numbering less than 500,000, it would "open a window so that the rest of the world can access the cultural riches of this indigenous people".
However, Mapuche leaders have responded to this act by sending a letter to Bill Gates accusing him of "intellectual piracy". "We feel like Microsoft and the Chilean Education Ministry have overlooked us by deciding to set up a committee to study the issue without our consent, our participation, and without the slightest consultation", said Aucan Huilcaman, one of the leaders involved in the legal dispute. "This is not the right road to go down."
Microsoft has previously translated Windows in Mohawk, Quechua, and Inuktitut without opposition.
The case will be heard in Santiago, although it was originally brought to a smaller court in Temuco. One of the Mapuche supporters has said that if the case goes against them, they will take it the Supreme Court, and are then willing to go up to the court of human rights. Biz, Lawsuits, Microsoft, Audio
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