By George Norman - Software News Editor
Added on 23 Oct 2008(706 Views)
It is official, not event software counterfeiters or pirates like Windows Vista. According Bonnie MacNaughton, senior attorney with Microsoft, software pirates find XP more profitable than Vista and consequently do not bother to pirate the latter. This announcement was made today, which was deemed by Microsoft as Global Anti Piracy Day.

The main goal of Global Anti-Piracy Day is to educate PC users about software piracy and to enforce anti-piracy measures all over the world (which adds up to seven continents and 49 countries).


According to Bonnie MacNaughton, software pirates are more interested in XP as opposed to Vista not because it is a better operating system, but because cracking Vista is considerably harder. There are certain security features in Vista which have been put there to make it hard for anyone to pirate it. In time, as these difficulties are surmounted, pirated versions of Windows Vista will definitely hit the underground market. The same applies to MSOffice 2003 compared to MSOffice 2007.

The thing is that starting with 2009, Microsoft will no longer supply Windows XP, not even to small It businesses. This is a golden opportunity for software pirates to fill a gap in the market, but Microsoft will not just sit by and watch this go down. “We're planning [a campaign] in January or February to make sure our customers know what our rules and policies are about Windows XP,” said MacNaughton.

The issue of counterfeit software is like a double edged sword. On one hand, it is a source of damage for any legitimate business, for the economy as a whole, and for the PC user (because the software is not exactly stable or bug free). On the other hand, there will always be people that cannot afford to fork out cash, and sometimes large amounts of cash, for software. They will either get it for cheap from the pirates, or for free from the Internet.





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Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Vista, Microsoft XP

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