| This book is about software piracy--what it is and how it's done. Stealing software is not to be condoned, and theft of intellectual property and copyright infringement are serious matters, but it's totally unrealistic to pretend that it doesn't happen. Software piracy has reached epidemic proportions. Many computer users know this, the software companies know this, and once you've read the Introduction to this book, you'll understand why. Seeing how widespread software piracy is, learning how it's accomplished, and particularly how incredibly easy it is to do might surprise you. This book describes how software piracy is actually being carried out.
* This book is about software piracy--what it is and how it's done
* This is the first book ever to describe how software is actually stolen and traded over the internet
* Discusses security implications resulting from over 1/2 of the internet's computers running illegal, unpatched, pirated software
In the last two decades, much of our world has undergone a major transformation. It started slow, switching from rotary to touchtone phones,TV knobs to digital remotes, and vinyl records to digital CD’s.Then it rapidly picked up speed as home computers became a standard household appliance and Internet service became a typical monthly utility bill.
At one time the home computer was a tool for students, hobbyists, and businesses.We used our computers to accomplish some specific task, such as balancing our checkbooks or keeping track of our schedules. Now the computer is a content delivery tool serving up communications, entertainment, education and other content. Our lives are now flooded with content.Weekly HTML newsletters in our inboxes link to blogs that link to clips from The Daily Show, or highlighting clips from 24-hour network news programs that we already keep up with via RSS feeds.We watch movie segments in games and game segments in movies.There’s always more content and there’s always another link to follow.
Sometimes the content is the highest quality, and sometimes it just plain sucks. If anything, this cultural transformation has changed how we perceive the value of content. Most often, we see it as something we should get for free—as if being in this modern world entitles us to an unlimited content license.With so much out there free for the taking, a fixed price tag somehow seems out of place.The result? An epidemic of global piracy.
We got a small glimpse of this world back in the eighties. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone’s family room shelves full of video tapes with hand-written labels of all the latest movies they had recorded. It didn’t seem illegal to make a mix tape of your favorite songs for some friends. Into the nineties, even computer stores loaded your PC up with the latest piracy-aiding software when you bought a computer from them. |
