Microsoft Launches "Global Anti-Piracy Day"

Microsoft early Tuesday morning announced "Global Anti-Piracy Day." The event is set to highlight both the educational (teaching people how to confirm authenticity of their OSes (as well, obviously, as informing them of the possible consequences of piracy) and enforcement aspects of Microsoft's various anti-piracy initiatives.

The 24-hour event includes the launch of education initiatives and enforcement actions in 49 countries on six continents. Microsoft's Global Anti-Piracy Fact Sheet (.DOC) highlights the activities, both educational and enforcement-related around the globe, and aims to focus attention to the subject.

According to Microsoft's press release:

"Software piracy and counterfeiting is a sophisticated, global trade with a damaging impact on consumers, businesses and economies, and Microsoft is committed to working with others around the world to stay a step ahead of this illegal industry," said David Finn, associate general counsel for Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft.

"There is growing evidence that highly organized, transnational criminal organizations and networks are involved in the counterfeiting of software and other goods. This is a global problem with global sources of supply; this is why we need to work together -- the public and the private sectors -- to stop this trade," said John Newton of the Intellectual Property Rights Project, Financial and High-Tech Crime Subdirectorate, INTERPOL General Secretariat. "To that end, Microsoft and INTERPOL are now cooperating with police and customs agencies around the world to use all available intelligence to ensure that our joint investigations lead to arrests and convictions of criminal counterfeiters."

"The global trade in fakes threatens consumers, businesses and the economy," said Guy Sebban, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce. "It will only be possible to halt counterfeiting and piracy on a global scale through this kind of collaboration between governments and the private sector -- both to educate people about the value of intellectual property and to take action against trade in illicit products."

According to Microsoft and the Fifth Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study from May 2008, the global economic loss in 2007 was estimated to be nearly $50 billion.

In a video from Microsoft's site (below), Rob McKenna, Washington State Attorney General said:

"When software pirates steal intellectual property, what they're really doing is killing American jobs and suffocating competition."

Pulling out my cynic's cap here, I'd actually say with all the software jobs outsourced overseas, they're actually killing a lot of Indian, Eastern European and Chinese jobs, too --- assuming that statement is correct.

It's also been clear for some time that XP far outstrips Vista in terms of piracy. This is likely somewhat a testament to the improved anti-piracy tech in Vista, as well no longer having simple volume license keys and Enterprise versions that could be unlocked with them, as with XP.

However, while Microsoft said the piracy rate in Western Europe has dropped to about 34% from 78% since 1991, emerging markets are still rampant with pirates, with rates above 90% in some countries.

Microsoft has an interactive Virtual Earth map on their site that shows all the activities and customer reactions worldwide.

Watch a video from Microsoft's GAPDFS "Virtual Pressroom." It's interesting that they tried to tie the current worldwide economic crisis to the economy. In reality, based on the size of the Wall Street bailout ($700 billion), when you magnify that worldwide, piracy's $50 billion cost is a drop in the bucket.

Obviously, I'm not advocating piracy, but it is interesting how they spun it. Sounds more like politics (groan) than anything else.