Most of the time, when you “buy” software, you are in fact buying a license to use that software, according to the end user license agreement that pops up when you install it (and that no-one reads). That agreement usually states that you cannot install the software on more than one computer.

Software piracy is the illegal installation or use of software on computer. There are various forms of piracy, from “lending” someone a copy of your installation CD & Key, Retail piracy, where a computer is sold with pirated software installed, through to large scale operations that reproduce and sell counterfeit copies of software in the same way they do movies & CDs.

In some cases, the end user is a victim of the piracy as much as the original software company is, in that the purchaser may have thought they were getting a genuine license, but they did not, and are left without CDs, License Keys, Support or Updates. It pays to check that you are getting genuine software.

From the Adobe Website: “Whether software piracy is deliberate or not, it is still illegal and punishable by law.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.