Interweavetech

I must defer to Sophie for finding this one and identifying the seal as phony, as indeed are they all. This one hasn't been approved, verified, accredited or rated by anyone.

Not to be outdone, and as I had some time to kill, I found another 42 of them:

www.247software.net
www.abbyy-finereader.org
www.adobe-cs4.org
www.adobe--acrobat.net
adobe-dreamweaver.org
www.adobepromo.com
autodesk-inventor.com
www.balticsoft.net
www.bbstats.com
www.bigsoftware.org
www.cheapest-software.net
www.corel-draw.org
www.desiredav.net
www.dicle.edu.tr (in subdirectory)
www.hebrew-dictionary.org
www.interweavetech.com
www.irishrurallink.ie
www.macromedia-fireworks.com
www.macromedia-flash-player.org
www.macromedia-8.com
www.mcafee-antivirus.org
www.medobs.net/css/
www.microsoft--windows.org
www.microsoft-office-2007.org
www.msoemstore.com
www.nalunu.net
www.oemsofwarebuy.org
www.oem-shop.com
www.oem-micro-store.com
www.office--ms.com
www.papa-soft.com
www.rosetta--stone.net
www.sale4all.net
www.softonsales.com
www.softsalez.info
www.soft-4-download.biz
www.soft-4-downloads.com
www.theauthorize.com
windows-7-download.org
www.windows--seven.net
www.windows--vista.net
www.worldimo.com

Some look alike and some don't but rest assured they're all running the same business. Given the nature of the products and prices, I assume that it's all pirated software.

Most of the titles I saw here are readily available all over the web already, either on file sharing or torrent sites, for free; I didn't go hunting but it's likely that eventually I'd find everything here for free somewhere else.

Because many people don't like the idea of getting a pirated copy for free, they'll be more willing to pay a phony "authorised dealer" hundreds of bucks for the identical title and maybe even the identical files. Does it occur to them that paying $300 for the Adobe Master Collection, which retails for $2500, suggests there's something very amiss here? Or that Adobe, which is fiercely protective of its software, would authorise such a giveaway? What do you think?

Someone is making $300 for a title which almost certainly cost them nothing, which when you think about it, is more immoral than someone cracking the application and giving it away for nothing. At least the cracker can argue that since the application is unaffordable by individuals anyway, she's bringing a ridiculously overpriced application within everyone's reach. The people involved here are in it for pure profit and get their money by deceiving their customers. There's no way they could even try to plead they're doing anything for the greater good.

My guess is that this is an operation run out of the former soviet union, and that it can and indeed may well fold up in a moment and reappear under a bunch of entirely different addresses in different countries faster than you can say до свидания. Until it does, steer clear of this lot. They don't have a Better Business Bureau in Latvia as far as I know.

The most remarkable find here is something I've never seen the like of before. One of these is actually hiding on a genuine governmental web site. It's in Taiwan, and it's the official local government site for the Hualien County Cultural Affairs Bureau at www.hccc.gov.tw. This year, they're hosting the Hualien International Stone Sculpture Festival, for which there's a rather nifty dynamic brochure reader in English at http://www.hccc.gov.tw/2009/english/

But delete the word "english" out of that URL and replace it with "soft" and you'll find a site identical to the one at interweavetech.com.
How did it get here? I guess we need to wait for a Chinese-speaking member to write to the Hualien County Cultural Affairs Bureau and ask. Anyone interested?

Needless to say, if you want to buy from these guys expect to be dealing with pirates and to be treated accordingly.