ns were pirated.Much of this astronomical worldwide piracy growth comes from the equally aggressive growth of the Internet around the world, coupled with the fact that intellectual property and copyright laws vary considerably from country to country. Although industry organizations like the Business Software Alliance have been successful in many of their worldwide efforts to combat software piracy, governments around the world must take steps to improve their intellectual property laws and enforcement systems to ensure that software is fully protected. The software industry stands ready to provide governments with the support they need to meet this challenge and would like to cooperate with governments to educate the public about the importance of respect for intellectual property rights in software. Software piracy harms more than just the software industry. Without commitment to reducing piracy from worldwide consumers, law enforcement, industry leaders and government officials alike, the potential for world economic growth, driven in part by the booming software industry, is seriously crippled. The high rate of piracy acts as asignificant barrier to the development of the software industry and precludes it from reaching its full potential around the world. Piracy threatens development and innovation by cheating legitimate budding software developers and companies out of the rights and rewards of their hard-earned intellectual property. As pirated software makes its way into countries around the world, so do the problems such software causes for consumers, including susceptibility to viruses, lack of technical support or warranties, and even the absence of key software program elements.http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/worldwide/Sabotage of software or hardware may include a: Trojan horse: a program that performs a useful task while also being secretly destructive An example is a logic bomb, which is programmed to attack in response t...
