Microsoft: your children are pirates and proud of it!

By Davey Winder
Monday, 21 July 2008 19:00

Networking

File under showing my age: when I was a lad, the worse bit of stealing that most kids did was a handful of penny sweets while the shopkeeper wasn't looking. According to research from Microsoft, these days 11-16 year old kids are most likely to be involved with piracy instead. Indeed, 60 percent of those children asked happily admitted to opting for pirate over legit items...

Anywhere that kids and technology meet, then piracy is not going to be far behind. That is an undeniable truth. Back in the seventies the technology was tape-to-tape recorders, and music swapping was rife as a result. Funnily enough, there was no huge outcry from the music industry at the time and certainly no concerted effort to sweep those music taping kids and their parents into court to pay for their crimes against rock, pop and disco.

Today, things are different on so many levels, yet one truth remains: kids still lead the way when it comes to the use of technology and their ability to adopt the role of pirate kings. Microsoft has been looking into the state of digital piracy in the UK, and the resulting 'The Real Thing' study makes for uncomfortable reading.

Referring to an IDC white paper which suggests that 59 percent of key generators and crack tools of the type used by pirates, and readily available from P2P networks, contain either malicious of potentially unwanted software Microsoft warns that there is a "dangerous discrepancy between children's highly developed technology skills and their often naive attitude to the risks they may face online" and refers to a disconnect between tech-savvy and street-savvy as being the online equivalent of "leaving the back gate open to identity theft and viruses that could cripple a home computer and leave families without precious photos, home movies and music files."

So what are the figures to back up the 'all your children are pirates' claim? Read on to find out...

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