UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 15, 2011. Microsoft Corporation came up with the latest updates on its piracy monitoring program in Russian provinces. In August-September 2011, about 23% out of 3,016 retail outlets in eighty Russian cities offered for sale unlicensed copies of computer software programs in one way or another.

In spite of the traditional seasonal increase in the number of pirated software programs on sale (the results of the monitoring in the fall showed 23% of programs were pirated, whereas in the spring, the figure came to 17%), all in all, piracy keeps going down.

In August-September 2011, 7% of Russian retail stores offered their customers pre-installed software products. This is actually 6% less that a year earlier, which means the most aggressive kind of computer piracy, the installation of a pirated operation system alongside with the sale of a computer, is on the decrease.

Nevertheless, the scale of piracy practices in Ural Federal District went up from 13% to 24% in the fall 2011 compared with the spring. This is worse than in Russia on average. Over a third of this figure is constituted by retail outlets offering pre-installed unlicensed software products alongside with a new computer (the figure comes to 9.3% in the Urals, while the country’s average is 7%). Piracy was at its highest in Surgut (43%) and Chelyabinsk (30%) and at its lowest in Kurgan (9%) and Tyumen (11%). It should be pointed out that Kurgan had the lowest piracy figures in the previous three monitoring sessions as well, as far as the Urals region is concerned.

In January 2009 to December 2010, Russia’s law-enforcement agencies conducted over 2,300 inspections of retail software traders. These inspections alone resulted in 200 claims for Microsoft’s Legal Department by June 2011.