News 

The report, dubbed The Real Thing, shows that copyright owners are losing the battle to either persuade or scare children into buying legitimate goods or download.

A quarter of the 11-16-year-olds surveyed by Microsoft say they will continue to buy counterfeit goods, even though they know it's illegal. Older kids are even more willing to flout the law, with four out of ten of the 16-year-olds surveyed saying they would knowingly buy pirated goods.

That's

ADVERTISEMENT

probably because a fifth of those surveyed said they could see no difference between fake goods and the real thing, despite Microsoft's insistence that pirated goods are a particularly virulent source of malware.

More than half of the children surveyed admitted to using file-sharing sites, while a fifth admitted to buying illegal goods on (naming no names) "auction websites".

Microsoft says parents need to be more aware of what their children are downloading. "File sharing is a great technology, but parents should make sure that their children are doing it legally," says Michala Wardell, head of anti-piracy at Microsoft UK.

"We know that there are dangers associated with downloading illegal software; research has shown a computer running pirated software is more likely to catch viruses - leaving the back gate open to identity fraud or the loss of photos and other files saved on the computer."

See this month's issue of PC Pro, on sale Thursday, to discover if the file-sharing virus threat is real.