Software piracy is the unlawful use and duplication of computer software. Software piracy can be committed in many different ways, with all having tough penalties and many other negative effects.
The illegal act of software piracy can occur in many different forms which all violate the copyright law. These forms include anything to sharing a twenty-dollar program with a friend to making and selling counterfeit software. The first and most common way software is pirated is through bootlegging. Bootlegging is like when you make a friend a copy of a software title or let them install it on their computer, which is illegal. (Adobe Systems Incorporated) Occurring frequently in business and offices is a form of software piracy called softloading. Investigation has found that one in four business programs in the U.S. are pirated. (Creed) Softloading is when business or individuals buy one license copy of a software title and install it on many computers or a server, which many users can access it. (Adobe Systems Incorporated) Thirdly, resellers commit software piracy if they break up bundled software for individual sales. Fourthly, some computer resellers preload their computers before they sale them with unauthorized copies of software to help sale their computers. The fifth form of software piracy is anything that violates the software license agreement that is supplied with the software. Downloading copyrighted software from the Internet illegally one of the ways to commit software piracy. Finally probably the most serious form software piracy is called counterfeiting, which is the selling, distributing and producing phony software that looks like the real thing.
If commit any of these acts of software piracy and so happens caught, be ready to receive some pretty harsh consequences. First of all, if your business is caught pirating software, you may be held legally responsible under civil and criminal law.