Microsoft "Anti-theft": China is also a victim of piracy

This reporter Liu Fangyuan Istanbul report into the mobile era, people increasingly accustomed to a variety of "free" content, free mobile phone operating system, a variety of free software applications. On personal computers, we need hundreds of thousand dollars to buy genuine software, does this model need to change? In the face of this problem, Microsoft's anti-piracy and digital crime director Juan Hardoy the answer to reporters is no, "people generally think that price reduction is a good way to reduce piracy, but, after our attempts to find that prices do not bring about too much change." Juan Hardoy that the core of anti-piracy lies in the degree to which a country attaches importance to intellectual property. Because it will affect the survival of local software companies, as well as the ability to innovate independently. "The more consumers use pirated software, the harder it is to encourage independent innovation, and it will fall into a vicious circle." "Is it useless to cut prices?" In the past decade, China has made great strides in cracking down on PC software piracy, according to the latest IDC statistics. China's PC software piracy rate has fallen by 15% since 2003-2011. However, China still has more than three-fourths of its computer software pirated. At present, One-fourth of the world's pirated software in China. "The piracy problem in China is really complicated. Juan Hardoy told reporters that the average Chinese spends 8.8 dollars on software on each PC, 25% of the other BRIC countries. In a period of 15% per cent of software piracy in China, China's PC holdings rose from 50 million in 2003 to 376 million in 2013, and consumers rose from less than 40% to nearly 55% per cent. and internet users have increased from less than 200 million to nearly 700 million. "But we have to admit that there is more damage to pirated software in the US market than in China because the U.S. market is bigger, even though the proportion of piracy is much lower than in China." Juan Hardoy said. Before, it has been thought that in developing countries such as China, the reason for the high rate of piracy is the pricing problem, the income level gap makes people less willing to spend a relatively high price to buy an operating system or office software. "That sounds a reasonable explanation. Juan Hardoy told reporters that Microsoft has made a lot of attempts to reduce prices, including students, the NGO version, and so on various discounts. "We've also tried to study the relevance of software prices and piracy, but in the end they found them irrelevant," he said. "For example, as early as 2010, Microsoft launched a project called" Campus Pioneer Program "in China, offering college students a 199-yuan Professional Edition of Windows 7 and 149 Campus Edition Office 2010, much lower than the two-dollar and 1399-dollar market price of the software at that time. But even so, many people do not want to buy a genuine, because "you can never be cheaper than piracy." "According to the Microsoft survey, there are now a number of websites that directly provide pirated free downloads, whichGain money by stealing user information through advertising or malware. Juan Hardoy told reporters that after the release of the campus discount version, it is possible to be moved to use it (because it is much cheaper than the market price), and even be used by pirates to use it for mass piracy. But he stressed that Microsoft will not suspend these meaningful projects, but anti-piracy cannot be done in such a way. The new strategy of anti-theft now there is an international view that, although China is not the world's largest PC software piracy rate-not even among the top 25 of piracy, it is probably the biggest producer of pirated software. On this issue, Marco Musumeci, Coordinator of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, stressed to reporters that "we should not accuse China of being a source of counterfeiting and piracy, but in fact China is also a victim." "In addition to strengthening its own technology, Microsoft has an important direction in promoting anti piracy in China, emphasizing that" China is also a victim of piracy ". According to IDC, in 2013, the proportion of PCs infected with pirated software worldwide will reach One-third. Consumers spend 22 billion dollars and 1.5 billion hours on the security issues that are involved in handling pirated software. The situation in the Asia-Pacific region will be even more serious. Recently, Microsoft has been buying personal computers for testing in traditional it stores and shopping malls in more than 40 cities in China. The researchers purchased 169 branded computers with pirated Windows operating systems. A systematic analysis of these computers showed that 91% of the PCs detected default security settings tampered with, or other obvious security vulnerabilities, 59% of PCs were already infected with malware at the time of sale, while 72% of PCs were changed when the default browser settings were sold. The home page typically directs users to fraudulent or "phishing" sites. However, according to the reporter understand, in the eyes of ordinary consumers, the effect of such education is obviously not obvious. Although the loss of knowingly infecting malware is likely to be much higher than the cost of buying genuine software, most consumers are lucky. For now, Microsoft's most effective weapon is to resort to law or to call on Beijing to pay more attention to intellectual property. "We find that there is a stronger correlation between piracy rates and law than prices," he said. "The rate of piracy will fall," says Juan Hardoy, "where intellectual property protection is valued." Where the value of intellectual property is low, the rate of piracy will rise. We are pleased that in recent years China has stepped up legal regulation against piracy. INTERPOL, a foreign adviser to Interpol, told reporters he believed that the future of China's anti counterfeiting and anti-piracy situation would be greatly improved, "because with the development of China's economy, the copy to China model will become increasingly unworkable, China needs innovation from within. "And the need to encourage innovation will require the government to protectMore efforts are being made to protect intellectual property. Juan Hardoy also expressed optimism that "as China's knowledge economy grows, more and more innovation comes from China." "And the new phenomenon that he has noticed is that other countries have started to steal Chinese intellectual property, which will more than encourage China to focus on IPR protection," so we will see a change in the future.