Microsoft to wage campaign vs piracy in Cebu

Sun.Star: CEBU CITY - Microsoft Philippines Inc. (MPI) said Wednesday it will conduct random check-up of all resellers and software dealers in Cebu, including those authorized by the company, to identify counterfeit and smuggled Microsoft products. Through the “Mystery Shopper" program, Microsoft will be aggressively on the lookout for fake and smuggled Microsoft products sold among resellers and dealers in southern Philippines, said MPI managing director Rafael “Pepeng" Rollan. In the last three months, the company has been randomly buying Microsoft products from resellers and information technology (IT) shops in key cities nationwide since August. They found out that among the purchased software products during the “trial buy," only two were genuinely manufactured by Microsoft while the rest were counterfeit, Rollan said. “It (the practice) is becoming rampant in the country," he said in an interview. Sellers While declining to divulge which resellers are selling the fake and smuggled Microsoft products, Rollan said some are from the Visayas and Mindanao. He also mentioned that should a Microsoft partner be involved in the illegal scheme, he said the matter will be referred to their Legal and Corporate Affairs Department and sanctions will be imposed on the violators. However, he did not specify what the sanctions are. “We are still checking if Microsoft partners are involved," he added. Partners MPI director for business marketing organization, Karrie Capellan-Ilagan, said about 200 of the company’s 2,000 partners nationwide are in the southern Philippines, including Cebu, Bacolod, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro and Davao. As part of their campaign, Rollan said they will replace counterfeit Microsoft products with original ones, provided the customers bought the fake products from authorized Microsoft resellers and they have the proof of purchase. “If you are a direct victim of counterfeit, just keep the receipt and present it to Microsoft for validation and we will replace it with a genuine product," he explained. A genuine Microsoft XP software application, for example, costs P8,000, thus, any product that costs below the amount may possibly be fake, said Rollan. Blended However, Rollan added what is becoming a real “cause of concern" is the production of “blended" Microsoft applications that are now proliferating in the gray market. “Blended," applications, he said, are a mixture of a counterfeit Microsoft software application and the original one. In the Philippines, there is now a big volume of these “blended" products sold, Rollan said. In identifying “blended" and counterfeit Microsoft products, he hinted that the sticker on the label usually reads “authorized for use in Asia Pacific." A genuine Microsoft product is labeled “authorized for use in the Philippines only." “Counterfeits are now very high-end. It’s so hard to distinguish from the original one. You only know that it’s a fake during the validation," said Rollan. The Business Software Alliance earlier reported that out of 100 software programs available, 71 percent are considered pirated or unlicensed. This means, an equivalent monetary loss of $19 million to the global software industry, the BSA said. - Sun.Star