Moscow is the best place in the world to find pirated copies of Windows, according to a new survey.

A recent survey carried out by the Microsoft among 2500 computer and software retailers in 53 cities across the Russian Federation showed that a quarter of dealers sold hot software. One in ten would even install it for you.

While software piracy is traditionally rife in Russia's Far East, high rates were also recorded in Yekaterinburg (41 per cent), Chelyabinsk (30 per cent) and Moscow (27 per cent).  In Moscow it is the volume sold which makes the place a bit worse. Yuri Zlobin, the head of the anti-piracy association "The Russian Shield" said it was a lot worse than that in the Capital.

He said only one in 10 of computer retailers in Moscow flogged legitimate software, adding that the situation in other regions was even worse. Sales of pirated DVDs, CDs and computer software have long been an issue in Russia, which has the second-largest market for pirated products after China, with intellectual copyright protection one of the issues that the United States has raised in bilateral negotiations over Russia's WTO accession.