Why do People Use Pirated Software?
Why do People Use
Pirated Software?
A major reason for the use of
pirated software is the prices of the REAL thing.
Just walk into a CompUSA,
Electronics Boutique, Computer City, Egghead, etc and you will notice the
expensive price tags on copies of the most commonly used programs and the
hottest games.
Take the recent Midwest Micro holiday catalogue for example and
notice the prices.
Microsoft Windows 95: $94, Microsoft Office 95: $224,
Microsoft Visual C++: $250, Borland C++: $213, Corel Draw 7: $229, Corel Office
Professional 7: $190, Lotus Smartsuite 96: $150, Microsoft Flight Simulator95:
$50, Warcraft 2: $30.
The list goes on and on and the prices for the programs
listed above were only upgrade versions.
Users of the software listed above
include anywhere from large companies like AT&T to yourself, the average
user at home.
Although a $30 game like Warcraft 2 doesn't seem like much, by
the time you finish reading this paper, it will seem like a fortune.
Ease of
Availability
Since the law states clearly that
making a copy of what you own and distributing it or installing more than one
copy of one piece of software on two separate computers is illegal, then why do
the average Joes like you and us still do it? There are many answers to that
question and all of them seem legitimate except that no answers can be legally
justified.
A friend borrowing another friend's Corel draw or Windows 95 to
install on their own PC is so common that the issue of piracy probably doesn't
even come to mind right away or even at all.
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