Open View

Perhaps the biggest battle software vendors fight today is against piracy. Not only the software vendors but also governments, other social and legal organizations too fight against piracy to help the vendors, the revenue generated from software piracy may be used to fund terrorists and also a pirated software could compromise security. Different methods are adopted to fight piracy. The most commonly used methods are to blacklisting the key, providing online activation of the product, changing the architecture of the software so as to make it tough to crack at registry level etc. A few of these methods are effective while majority still fail. Crackers still prove to be increasingly anomalous.  However Apple was one company which was able to fight piracy at a better level. Mainly because their software and hardware come bundled. After the release of the Apple store in July 2008, this was not the case. In a recent estimation Apple has lost over $450 million due to piracy. Almost 75 percent of the software downloaded and used in the iPhones and iPods are pirated. It is unwise to assume that these pirates would pay and download these software if they do not pirate it. Like every other company in the bandwagon, Apple too tries the same methods to cut down piracy. Figures suggesting that they were able to convert 10 percent of the pirates to paid users is heartening. Hope better methods are used and the battle is won by the good side.