Software Piracy

The unauthorised copying of software refers to software piracy. Almost all software programs are licensed to use on one one computer or by one user at any point in time. When the customer purchases the software, he becomes a licensed user rather than an owner. The customer is only allowed to make copies of the program for backup purposes only, and it is illegal to make copies to distribute to other people. Software piracy are so much easier to spread nowadays. This is due to the widely accessible Internet channels, usually through peer-to-peer file sharing systems and pirate distribution sites that make software available for download for free.

Software piracy is a huge illegal business, running into billions of dollars. These includes the sale of imitation software on Internet auction and classified ads Web sites. Imitation software which overrides the registration license code needed to run the software properly are rampant and are otherwise known as Warez. The imitation software which usually comes with a nice, almost perfect retail box similar to the real box makes it very hard to differentiate between the real and the imitation software.

There are many people who bought these imitation software sincerely believing that they have bought the genuine stuff. And the losers are the software authors and companies who made the software. Increasingly, there are even spyware and trojan horses that are attached to these imitation software, which will hard the buyer’s computer. So, imitation software is hard to stamp out. Users should make a conscious effort to buy the real stuff from reputatble ecommerce shops online and offline in the brick and mortar environment. In doing so, it will stamp out software piracy.

Examples of anti piracy tools and software security includes software licensing management.
There are 2 types of software licensing management – online and offline.
Online license key means whenever the software starts up, the software will
check with with online web server for genuine registration code. This is better
than offline key license. When the offline registration code is keyed in, the software
is enabled and there is no way to track multiple copies of the same software running
at the same time. Online license key does that by checking real time and prevents
mulitple copies of the software running simultaneously.

Other methods of software security includes web based software applications.
This means the user has to key in unique username and password in order
to access the web based application. This is easier to implement sofware licensing.

Anti piracy works well to a certain extent. This software security can deter casual
users but not the hackers who can decode and crack the software easily.  Another option
to use for anti piracy is to price the software low enough so that it is not worth while for
the hackers to hack, this is very subjective and is up the vendors to decide for themselves.