Microsoft Targets South African Piracy

When it comes to piracy, Africa is an especially tricky market. Most companies will state that markets in Africa are simply ‘too small’ to worry about, although it could be argued that if people paid for the software they use the market could grow. Despite this, Microsoft recently went after a major reseller of pirated software in South Africa…

A Port Elizabeth (PE) businessman is being prosecuted for selling hundreds-of-thousands of rands worth of counterfeit Microsoft software. Packaged to look like the real thing, and featuring simulated holograms and counterfeit certificates of authenticity, the goods were being sold out of Vikesh Singh’s PE Technologies shop, in Newton Park, PE. Dale Waterman, Microsoft’s corporate attorney for anti-piracy in the Middle East and Africa, accompanied police on the raid. “Evidence uncovered during the raid points to the supply of products manufactured by a global counterfeiting syndicate from the Far East.

Via Afro-IP