A Downloadable Whitepaper from Microsoft on "The Risk of Obtaining and Using Pirated Software"

A Downloadable Whitepaper from Microsoft on "The Risk of Obtaining and Using Pirated Software"

Pirated software and tampered media is a killing menace for software organizations worldwide. For developing nations like India, this is a heightened menace. The more compelling and convincing solution to this problem is to have more awareness to general public. I just came across a comprehensive whitepaper in Microsoft Download Center, which is just about 300Kb in size and it provides a lucid and elegant analysis of the various risks involved with obtaining and using pirated software.

The PDF can be downloaded from here. The whitepaper analyses the risk from the following four perspectives in broader terms:

1. Simple Internet Search for free software, key generator etc.
2. The malicious site also puts in harmful code into the key generator and similar illegal tools.

I hence thought I would share this whitepaper URL over here for the benefit of everyone and in a humble endeavor to put a period to software piracy.