Microsoft Vista's China Debut Raises Piracy Issue

BEIJING (Reuters)- Microsoft Corporation rolled out Windows Vista at retailers around the world on Tuesday, hoping to dazzle customers with new multimedia features, while in China the focus turned to its new anti-piracy properties.
Washington said last month that U.S. companies are still suffering "unacceptably high" losses in China due to counterfeiting and piracy.
Many products seem to be rapidly counterfeited in China, including purses and accessories, DVD's, music and so much more. The exciting news about the release of Microsoft's new software was short lived because of this major problem. I believe something drastic needs to be done in order to protect merchandize created in the U.S.
With pirated copies already available in Beijing, Microsoft has been doing a lot to reduce the impact of piracy on the product. Vice President Scott Di Valerio says that "there will be reduced functionality that will occur if you run non-genuine versions of the software".
The article reads on to say that, ironically, Apple Inc. asserts that Vista is a copycat version of its Mac OS X Tiger operating system that previously came out with similar features.
I think this article proves that innovation is becoming a challenge in today's world and something needs to be done to insure that these innovations are protected. I am excited for the release of Microsoft's new Vista software and I hope that the issue of piracy is taken very seriously in the future.

By Adrian Reamey