After the SIIA official was outbid, he would receive an e-mail from a seller offering software for less than his lowest bid. The SIIA white paper says software sellers manipulate the rules of Internet auction sites to datamine e-mail addresses of bidders on software, creating a direct marketing channel. EBay has tried to counter this by making it impossible to search for certain words, such as backup and CD-RW, in the software category. Yahoo is considering doing the same, Beruk said. The SIIA white paper also shows how suspected pirates are using Internet auctions to turn better than a 90 percent profit from sales of illegal software products, and how they are reaching thousands of new customers with little effort or cost.
Pirates also enjoy virtual anonymity through multiple screen names, the paper says.
It also explains the risks consumers face when purchasing pirated software. Margret Johnston is a Washington correspondent for the IDG News Service. As increasingly powerful processing capabilities are embedded into ever- smaller devices, the computing landscape is shifting toward physically smaller gadgets. Explore the issues involved in using Java to program these emergent devices. Click to Download.