In an attempt to step up its anti-piracy efforts, Microsoft on Tuesday launched an anti-piracy campaign – ‘Global Anti-Piracy Day’ – which includes a series of education and enforcement actions in 49 countries in six continents.

According to the associate general counsel for worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting at Microsoft, David Finn, the company is committed to working with others around the world to stay a step ahead of the piracy industry, and the campaign is a bid to combat counterfeit software.

The anti-piracy effort includes programs like intellectual property awareness campaigns, engagements with partner businesses, educational forums, local law enforcement training, and new legal actions against alleged software counterfeiters and pirates.

Talking about the anti-piracy move by the software giant, Bonnie MacNaughton, Microsoft senior attorney, said: “One of the reasons we believe this announcement is important is it consolidates a lot of our activities in connection with our partnerships with governments, our customers and partners.”

David Finn, associate general counsel for worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting at Microsoft, is in Singapore as part of an Asian tour to launch the new initiative. In fact, the initiative is extremely broad, so much so that Microsoft has created an interactive map users can scroll over to find out what Microsoft has planned for particular countries.  

As part of the strategy, Microsoft has filed 20 lawsuits against software resellers in the United States for selling pirated copies of Office 2007 Enterprise, Microsoft Windows XP Pro, Office 2003 Pro, and Office 2007 Pro.

The lawsuits are part of a counterpunch by Microsoft against an illegal industry estimated by the Business Software Alliance of costing the US economy $8 billion in the year 2007. Taken on a global basis, the figures stand at nearly $50 billion.