The company wanted YouTube to remove comments from video pages which included stolen Windows product keys

Oct 15, 2014 07:35 GMT  ·  By

Everybody knows that Microsoft’s products are among the most pirated in the entire world, so it’s no surprise that the company itself is trying to hunt down those distributing illegal copies of its software and take down counterfeited applications.

The same happened a couple of days ago, when Microsoft contacted YouTube to remove comments on a number of Windows videos that were said to contain stolen product keys.

The only problem is that, while Microsoft wanted only these comments to be removed, YouTube actually deleted the videos in question, thus impacting lots of users who had previously uploaded Windows tutorials or in-depth looks at specific features.

Microsoft was quick to reply in a statement that all these videos were removed accidentally, confirming that it was working with YouTube to restore all of them as soon as possible.

Microsoft: We’re sorry for taking down your vids

The company has already issued a statement to explain what happened and also explained in some tweets that it actually targeted comments posted on YouTube and not the actual videos.

“Our intention was not to target legitimate YouTube content and we are sorry for the impact this has had.  We have already taken steps to reinstate legitimate video content and are working towards a better solution to targeting stolen IP while respecting legitimate content,” it said.

Scott Hanselman, who himself works for Microsoft, confirmed in a tweet that one of his videos got removed as well, adding that the company was actively working with YouTube to make all clips available as soon as possible.

Windows and Office still the most pirated apps

According to a study conducted by ViLabs, Windows and Microsoft Office are two of the most pirated apps in the United Kingdom, followed by Photoshop, Illustrator, AutoCAD, and virtual DJ.

As far as the regions where pirated content is still being used, China leads the top but is closely followed by Taiwan, the United States, Korea, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Italy, and France.

Microsoft is actively working to remove pirated content from the web, and according to the same study, it sends approximately 800,000 takedown notices each month, thus struggling to make sure that links providing access to illegal copies of its software are really hard to find.

This, however, continues to be a really difficult mission, mostly because software piracy isn’t an issue that can be tackled only by educating consumers because businesses in the aforementioned markets are also said to be running illegal copies of Windows and Office.

Bill Gates himself said that in China two of the five most profitable businesses weren’t paying for their software, while Ballmer added that nine out of ten copies of Windows in the country were using a stolen product key.