Currently, Microsoft's main source of information regarding software piracy activity sources from its piracy hotline, according to Microsoft Australia's corporate attorney, Vanessa Hutley.
The hotline receives around 300 calls per month on average but is yet to receive a significant number of calls regarding Windows XP piracy in Australia.
"I think we've come across a few low-level counterfeits [of Windows XP], " she said.
Hutley said the term low-level counterfeits refers to software products that have been burned on to gold or blue CD-ROMs that carry no pretence of being authentic Microsoft inventory.
The corporate affairs attorney, who has worked in Microsoft intellectual property education programs throughout South-East Asia, said that it is difficult to compare the Australian piracy culture to Singaporean.
She said that while the piracy activity that descends on Singapore's Sim Lim square--the site of last month's raids--is "overt", large-scale and central in character, in Australia software counterfeiting operations are covert and dispersed over a large number of potential sites.
She warned, however, that this shouldn't be taken as indication that Microsoft not taking a proactive approach to the problem. She said that aside from the company's ongoing investigations, education is the most active way to combat to piracy.
"We want to look at arming consumers with knowledge," she said referring to Microsoft's multi-pronged consumer education strategies. "We're in here for the long haul. We want consumers to see the value of intellectual property."
Consumers who are concerned that they may have received counterfeit Microsoft products can contact Microsoft's anti-piracy team on 1800 639 963.
Microsoft is really desperate to get people using inferior software, that they even condone piracy of their own software by not acting against reported pirates.
Their rationale might be, that someone who pirates MS software today is going to purchase their products tomorrow as they would have invested their time learning the inferior software.
Thus, once they learned how to use the software many people would rather pay for a new release than throwing their acquired knowledge away.
It would make more sense to change to a more solid platform such as Unix or Linux where they could download the software for free and live without the liberties Microsoft is taking.