Imagine that a person offered to break into a software store, turn off all the alarms, and hold the doors open, and allow you to take whatever you wanted from the store. This situation is faced by most computer owners everyday, not necessarily in this form, but in the form of software piracy. Software piracy is the unauthorised duplication and or distribution of copyrighted programs. There would only be select group who would not be tempted by the prospect of basically free software, most of those who are offered these kind of goods either accept them, or are unaware that they are not legitimate. No matter how this crime is being conducted, it has been estimated that this sort of crime is costing the world approximately 13 billion dollars annually.

Software piracy became popular through the use of Bulletin Boards, which allowed people to dial into other an "underground" archive of pirated software. Around this time, 31/2 Inch discs were also a popular medium for pirated software.

This is a question asked by many people, who do not know the damage caused by software piracy. The initial problem lies in the producers of the piece of software, and to make up for the cost of production, they must sell thousands of copies. However, software piracy has caused the widespread loss of sales, which in turn reduces the amount of money received by the makers of the program. Ultimately, this result in the producers being forced to increase the price of their product, which again, encourages the use of cheap pirated software. This can be described as a piracy cycle.

This is not an easy problem to fully eliminate, because of the diversity in its participants, from large-scale companies, to people operating private CD-writers, however steps can be taken to reduce the amount of pirated software being bought and used. Software piracy has been likened to jaywalking, in that it is common, but not punished often. This must change. Software piracy should incur immediate prosecution, and swift punishment. This way, prospective software pirates will be d

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Approximate Word count = 715
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)