Although the sales of counterfeit software in Ural Federal District’s computer shops have been on the decrease lately, the local software piracy statistics still looks more alarming that the data on the country’s average piracy levels, Microsoft’s piracy monitoring report states.

According to this report, on average, 23% of Ural computer shops sell or recommend counterfeit software; 12% of stores offer the service of having pirated software installed right there. The figures for Chelyabinsk, for one, are close to the district’s average piracy indicators. In Magnitogorsk, the number of such stores comes to 69%, thus making this city one of Russia’s most notorious piracy havens. Surgut has been monitored for the first time and it was detected that 40% of computer stores there offered counterfeit software for sale.

Microsoft reports, however, that in Yekaterinburg, the number of fakes on sale has gone down considerably compared with the previous checks that took place in February 2010.

The inspection and monitoring were carried out by Ural Federal District’s law-enforcement agencies in April 2009-April 2010. The agencies inspected over sixty pirated software distributors, forty-three of whom dealt in illegal software installation, sixteen stores selling counterfeit software CDs, and four organizations that rendered their customers the services of software installation.

‘By installing unlicensed software on their customers’ computers, these pirates violate the rights of software manufacturers and put their customers in jeopardy, as a pirated program cannot guarantee good work, virus protection, or good quality tech support,’ Microsoft representatives explain.