Software giant Microsoft claims that it has launched an initiative to curb software piracy because its own customers have asked it to take action.

Vipul Pant, director of Microsoft's "genuine software initiative" claimed that consumers were apparently flooding Redmond with complaints that they have been victim of piracy. He said that if the punters grass up the pirates then Microsoft will send the boys around to deal with them.The company has also initiated civil legal actions on errant re-sellers and involved the police in conducting surprise checks on known piracy vending locations.

Pant said that since January, he had received more than  2,000 complaints in India, and more than 150,000 from consumers across the world. We would have thought it unusual that a company would ring up Redmond and say “look we are running pirated software”. It is a bit like robbing a sweet shop and then going up to the coppers and offering the buy the chocolate afterwards.

Pant seems to think they are getting in touch with Microsoft because they are finding their pirated copies have embedded malware. KPMG in a whitepaper figured out that 59 percent of crack tools and keygens they surveyed had embedded malware, said Pant.