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Sneaky Sharing

Despite well-publicized wins by piracy foes, illegal digital music and movie trading continues to flourish in underground havens.

Michael Desmond

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Software on the Sly

Illustration: Peter Hoey
Hollywood is not alone in feeling the pinch of online pirates. The software industry also faces a significant and growing threat from pirates who spam users relentlessly, marketing cheap, bare-bones copies of popular software such as major products from Adobe, Intuit, and Microsoft.

The e-mail originates largely from Eastern Europe, says John Wolfe, the Business Software Association's manager of investigations. While the spam often describes these copies as being for personal "backup" purposes, Wolfe emphasizes that the practice clearly violates copyright law: The sites make no effort to verify that buyers already have a license for the software, and many offer cracks that let buyers avoid the software's copy protection.

Most such sites have sprung up in the last 12 months, according to industry investigations. And though illegal software sales are difficult to track, Sean Myers, manager of Internet antipiracy at the Software Information and Industry Association, says that, based on his observations, sales of sham backup copies have tripled in the past year.

The BSA and similar groups have a very limited ability to confront offshore pirates. So as with P-to-P file sharing, scrutiny could fall on those who buy the illegal copies of applications.

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