Microsoft Announces Anti-Piracy Day

It’s Anti-Piracy Day according to Microsoft, although that doesn’t mean everyone gets the day off.

While not an official federal holiday for all to enjoy, Bill and the Gang are setting forth a "24-hour snapshot" of enforcement actions and "education initiatives" that will span across 49 countries and six continents. This massive, global assault plans to squash pirating once and for all with new legal actions against alleged software counterfeiters and pirates as well as local law enforcement training, educational forums, IP awareness campaigns and more. In other words, Microsoft plans to squash pirates like tiny little bugs. The company even launched a special website to keep consumers and entrepreneurs alike informed and up-to-date.

"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. "In partnership with national governments, local law enforcement agencies, and our customer and partner communities, Microsoft is driving anti-piracy efforts across countries and continents through an equally sophisticated system of business intelligence, forensics, and education. Together, we are working to identify international connection points between software pirates and counterfeiters, to help stop them in their tracks and protect consumers and legitimate businesses from this illegal trade."

While one can’t help but applaud their efforts, piracy seems to continue to ravage the PC industry like a wild, hungry animal. According to Microsoft, more than one third of PCs globally contain unlicensed, pirated, or counterfeit software. That’s quite a bit of money overall, and in 2007, the global economic loss was estimated at nearly US$50 billion according to the Fifth Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study, May 2008.

Yet when you listen to publishers and developers in the gaming industry, they will fire back and say that piracy is killing the business altogether. Randy Stude, president of the newly-formed PC Gaming Alliance, spoke about piracy in a recent interview with VideoGamer.com and actually blamed some of the publishers for the piracy problem. "Any publisher today who’s making any game that’s going out on any platform and isn’t thinking about the potential of piracy with the widespread availability of broadband and the patience that people have to kick-off a download that may take a day or more, if they’re not thinking that’s a real problem for them or a potential problem for them, then they’re going to have challenges and they’re going to act like it’s a big surprise. It’s like anything else in business."

But Microsoft, who has a stake in the video game business, seems assured that this latest initiative will benefit everyone in the PC industry and perhaps even console-based publishers and developers. Its recent efforts include launching an anti-piracy weblog in Brazil, training sessions on cybercrimes in Turkey, launching an employee anti-piracy ambassador program in Italy, and the company just filed 20 civil lawsuits in federal court in nine states "against resellers alleged to be selling computers with preloaded unlicensed and/or counterfeit Microsoft Windows XP Professional and multiple versions of Microsoft Office software." Ouch.

"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."

In the long run, Microsoft is not only out to protect the industry’s economy, but to protect the consumers as well. The launch of the Windows Genuine Advantage was to assure its customers that the installed operating system is an actual product, and not a hacked install that could potentially harm the consumer. After all, pirated operating systems could very well send out personal information to the hacker. Yet many consumers see the WGA as nothing more than an aggravation and an infringement on their privacy. The same holds true for anti-piracy software (DRM) installing on PCs such as SecuROM, SafeDisc and StarForce.

Yet piracy isn’t a hobby. It’s a business and an evil adversary to all software companies whether it’s related to games, document editors or 3D modeling programs. "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."

Sounds like someone is turning up the heat. Maybe this is what the industry needs : an aggressive approach to inform, educate, and eradicate. But there’s a positive light at the end of the tunnel : the industry is actually making some headway in its battle against piracy. According to David Finn, the piracy rate in Western Europe has dropped to 34 percent in comparison to the 78 percent level in 1991. Even though that could be defined as a 1:5 ratio (one out of five is illegitimate), it’s only a matter of time before companies figure out the sweet spot and thwart pirates altogether. Still, resourceful individuals will find any attempt to stop piracy as a challenge, thus double their efforts.

Is this a war to be won ? Time will tell. In the meantime, Happy Anti-Piracy Day !