Stop for one minute and take a look inside the front cover of the instruction book (or somewhere on the box) of a computer program you bought recently. You might come across a sentence or two that have such words as "copyright", or "license agreement", but what do these words really mean? The authors of the software package are trying to tell you that you have paid for the rights to own a license of a specific program. This means that you do not own the program, but rather have paid the fee to legally run a copy of that program on your computer. More specifically, this "license agreement" mean that you have the right to run only one copy of this program, and have the right to make copies of the software for backup purposes only. What the lawyers are trying to tell you is that you cannot make a copy of this software and give it to a friend to use on his computer. Such acts as described (the copying and distributing of a copy-written software) is called "Software Piracy".

    Software piracy began as soon as software began to be copy-write protected. Back in the days of text based gaming and monochrome monitors many computer consumers found that they could save money by just splitting the cost of buying one copy of a software and then making copies for everyone in the group. In effect you are getting the same product for 1/nth the price ( where n equals the number of people in the group). Some hobbyist just had fun figuring out how to get around the copy write protection. But, back then, the Internet as we know it did not exist so distribution was kept pretty localized and small. As time went on and as the Internet grew both faster and larger, the market demand for software grew enormously; and so did software piracy. With the increased speed of Internet lines, thousands of copies of a program can be distributed all over the world in less than one day. Many Internet web pages now contain full versions of software available for download by anyone. These sites usually refer to their collections as "Warez" (pronounced like "wares" in "Softwares"). Many news groups and chat lines are now devoted to warez trading.

    There is no doubt that software piracy has created quite an uproar with software developers. To software developers, every time someone receives an illegal copy of software it means they are NOT receiving payment for that copy. A good analogy would be if someone walked out of a supermarket with a bag of apples, without paying. This person walks outside the store and gives apples to complete strangers. The store owner loses money not only because of the stolen bag, but also because for every stranger that gets a stolen apple outside the store that is one less sale for the store owner.

    Software developers have tried various methods to eliminate software piracy. One method used is to require users to register their programs before they would be allow to use it. Unfortunately, software pirates found ways around registrations without much problem. Another method used was to rely on the good nature of people and offer programs in a form called "shareware". Shareware programmers encourage computer users to give copies to their friends. The catch is that the shareware program may not implement all of the features of the program. For a user to get all of the features, they would have to pay a fee to the developers and in return they get a passkey that "unlocks" the program. (sometimes the distributor may send a disk that contains the key). Other shareware programs were intended to entice users and pull them into going to the store and buying the retail version.

    A problem arises for software developers because the current copyright laws in America say it is legal to make copies of a program and receive copies of a program, as long as the person does not make a profit. A popular court case involving software piracy is about a college student, David LaMacchia, who was brought up on charges of distributing millions of dollars worth of software. LaMacchia posted software on a bulletin board where people could freely download it. The jury found LaMacchia not-guilt because he did not make a profit from the distribution. Another problem for software developers is the fact that software piracy is too large to police. It would require a police officer at every computer connected to the Internet to control the distribution of illegal copies of programs, and even that wouldn'’t stop two friensd fro installing a program on two computers off the same CD.

    Software Piracy is the new wave of computer crime, and right now the law is on the side of criminals. So until the laws and the software distributors come to an agreement the "pirates" of the Internet will live on.

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