infoJustice

Anil Varghese, Director of the Original Software Initiative, Microsoft India was recently interviewed for the Indian News outfit COIL.  He told the interviewer that “software piracy rates in India have declined from 74 per cent to 65 per cent in the last seven years,” but “global losses from piracy and counterfeiting account for approximately $1 trillion.”

When asked to share key findings from the MS India survey, he said, “consumers know the difference between genuine and counterfeit software; and that genuine software performs better; consumers are four times more likely to recommend genuine than counterfeit software; consumers think there are risks with using counterfeit software, and 50 per cent of them even don’t believe in counterfeit software. The findings also revealed that, 79 per cent consumers agree that they need ways to protect themselves from inadvertently buying counterfeit software. Moreover, 82 per cent think that software companies should do more to stop their products from being counterfeited while 76 per cent consumers believe that government should do more to reduce the amount of counterfeit software.”

The Microsoft Consumer Survey was conducted by the polling firm TNS, which polled consumers in 38,000 consumers in 20 countries between September 22 and October 5.  All respondents were over 18, and owned their own PCs.

Click here for the interview with Anil Varghese in COIL (April 14, 2011).

Click here for Microsoft’s announcement of the survey results (November, 2010)