Security & Control Issues - Software Piracy II : The Issues....

As I stated in my earlier post, software piracy is illegal. Ironically, many who pirate software are fully aware of the legalities, though they are able to rationalize continuing the practice. Some have difficulty understanding the distinction between freeware, shareware and commercial software. Others believe students won't be able to take advantage of the many technology-based educational opportunities without access to unaffordable software. Since software budgeting is often inadequate, and occasional upgrade of hardware makes older versions of software obsolete after several years, some think the only "solution" to the problem is to pirate newer versions of past purchased software. Finally, some people don't believe that software piracy is truly stealing because there is no loss of a tangible product involved in the act of piracy.
Both the government and software companies are actively involved in efforts to eliminate piracy. The two major groups of software manufacturers involved in this effort are the Software Publishers Association (http://www.spa.org) and the Business Software Alliance (http://www.bsa.org/index.html). These organizations regularly bring suit against companies involved in piracy, provide a hotline for reporting software piracy and provide web pages for online reporting of software piracy. Stay tuned for my next post on ways to prevent from getting these 'dirty' things. So guys, beware to those who make pirate copies of these softwares. BEWARE!!