On my computer I have installed quite a few warez programs that I virtually never use – I try them out and then after sitting there dormant for a long time I eventually uninstall them to clean up the start menu. Kind of like cleaning out a cluttered refrigerator, closet or attic every now and then.

I can understand the significance of a business using expensive technical software illegally, as this gives them an unfair competitive advantage over a competitor that purchases its software. In many businesses in scientific, engineering and technical fields, the cost of software licenses can be a major operating expense. But how do you compare a business that uses unregistered software professionally to a consumer that uses it only very occasionally if at all?

Rather than going after the little guys like college students who write cracks, First World governments should target the corporations within their own borders that outsource jobs to subcontractors in countries which are known to use pirated software. How about some laws making all the Haliburtons pay a hefty fine if even one of their foreign subcontractors is caught using illegal software. The problem is that these corporations know very well that those 3rd world companies – and sometimes their own overseas subsidiaries – that they outsource to are using bootleg software. Yet they consider it someone else’s problem as long as outsourcing saves them money. The big corporations are, as usual, not held accountable, and can easily get away with it because of who they are.

Sure you can if you’re part of the entertainment industry – it’s SOP ; )

These BSA stats are fundamentally flawed. A great majority of people who pirate software there can’t afford to buy it legally, even if they wanted to. They simply don’t have the money. You can’t claim losses from sales that never would have happened in the first place.

There’s no way to prevent piracy from happening: it’s simply too easy to duplicate programs. Anti-piracy schemes built into software has proven to be more of a hassle than a success, so that’s not a workable solution. However, we can limit some of the piracy by encoding into the applications that they only present themselves in say, English–at least that way, non-English speakers wouldn’t be interested in buying pirated copies since they wouldn’t be able to use or read it.