Although the roots of piracy go as far as 102 BC the true sea pirates golden age was between the time periods of the very late 1600's and the year of 1923 when almost all pirates suddenly disappeared. Pirates attacked the Romans as early as 100 BC. This was not as rough as the future pirates would be, but the idealism of piracy was present. The so-called piracy's golden age started i

Computers In Society 6th ed. Dushkin Group/Brown&Benchmark Publishers: Guilford, CT, 1996.

However, there are some businesses and firms that deliberately copy software to cut costs or to sell it. These counterfeiter businesses are seen as the primary culprits of committing software piracy ("Software Piracy"10) because they obtain a copy and then pass it around to 10 people and still have it on network. Why is this considered piracy? Because a user has to pay for every used copy and when it is on a network there is only one copy and the whole office is using it. If it is used on 10 machines the company should purchase 10 copies of that software. It doesn't seem a big deal to copy software, so why care? It sure has not shaken Microsoft, or any other massive company, but smaller companies are the ones that are usually hit hard by piracy. This is because their sales are not as vast and the numbers of pirated software exceeds the legitimate number of software on consumers' computers, so the small business or company does not get enough profit to keep itself from bankruptcy. This shows how fast a copy of software program can spread and a company's profit is lost. A friend copies a game from a friend who got it off a pirate bulletin board. This friend then copies the game to the entire computer-owning friends of his and so forth. If all this goes well, you can have 150 copies around a small city or town in a week. This adds up to about $7500 a week in a small city; small companies just cannot afford to lose that much profit per city, at that rate. Currently software companies are trying to rid the world of software piracy, but the problem is vast and cannot be resolved in a day and a night. Even if it was solved, the question remains would it be for the good of the computer industry or would it be for the worst of it. Companies are claiming that if piracy were eliminated, there would be a huge drop in prices. Experts say that if this would happen the cheap alternative companies would gain ground and later control the market. What will happen, remains to be seen.

This statement been said, "Piracy could never be completely gotten rid of." This is a very true statement. It did take a long time, now pirates have set sail again and this time in cyberspace (The Internet). Their vessels are no longer ships filled with gunpowder and cannons, but desktop and laptop computers. Software piracy has existed as long as software itself, but it has not had a notable effect before the late1980's. The pirating of software just got easier as hardware became more advanced. The development of the modem has allowed the computer to transmit and receive data. Due to this technological advancement pirates (modern term Hackers) have been able to put pirated software on webpages and websites around cyberspace. These webpages and websites offer the newest and most popular games and programs available for downloading. The downloading and these pages and sites are almost or completely free. This of course is illegal because the game manufacturer has a copyright on the product. The pages or sits are not operated or used by hardened criminals, but youths that just cannot afford the amazingly high priced games and programs. The software companies add to the price of the software because of the losses due to piracy. This then, increases the number of pirates because of the sky rocketing of the prices. Some good

Some common words found in the essay are:
Bartholomew Roberts, Software Piracy10, , York City, Publishers' Association, England Piracy, Computers Society, BBC Sometimes, Country Millions, Association SPA, copy software, software piracy, golden age, publishers' association, software publishers', software publishers' association, software pirates, webpages websites, break law, friend copies game, pirated software, merchant ships, software pirates copy,
Approximate Word count = 2312
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)