Microsoft combats software piracy with social media campaign in Hong Kong

The online campaign, set to start tomorrow and run until the end of September, is meant to educate enterprises about the benefits of using licensed software. It also seeks to educate audiences on the nature of intellectual property rights, and the risks of using pirated products.

Microsoft will promote an interactive video through its own website, as well as Facebook, radio and search engine advertising, with the hope that it will go viral.

In the video, Bob Lam, local radio personality and TVB programme host, acts as a stingy and acidulous small business owner who has been jailed for breaching anti-piracy laws and is trying to escape.

The storyboard is divided into several parts, where viewers will need to make choices at the end of each part that will determine the development of the storyline, resulting in alternate plots culminating in the same ending.

Under the Hong Kong's copyright ordinance, an organisation’s directors, partners and senior managers can be criminally liable if their employees use illegal software, even if they are not aware about it.