Okay, maybe that's a bit much. But the metaphor doesn't seem too far off, as I read about the latest crackdown on software piracy by the Business Software Alliance, a group comprised of such software royalty as Microsoft, Lotus, Novell, Adobe and Network Associates.
Software piracy is costly for the industry and users alike.
On the other hand, such piracy can be expensive to pirates themselves. The software alliance says that small businesses are most likely to harbor piracy, either by failing to control office software use or by turning a blind eye to such pillage. Which brings us, I think, to the central point of the whole issue - though many businesses people would jump to sue someone stealing their company's patents or copyrights, they somehow think it's OK to swipe software. But no matter how hard you wink, stealing somebody else's work is just wrong. David Wichner is the editor of Star Tech.