Software piracy statistics scream for attention every May when the Business Software Alliance (BSA) releases its piracy report. Its angst is understandable when it rues that almost half of the estimated one billion personal computers (PCs) have pirated/unlicensed software, resulting in losses of $48 billion — an increase of six times over the 2007 figures.

Recently there have been numerous discussions on software and media piracy, with a few people even saying that open source could be the solution to stopping software piracy... However, software piracy is one of open source's biggest enemies, and few people realize that.

Linux is often mentioned in discussions on Intellectual Property (IP) and the protection thereof. The reason is two-fold. First, the Linux platform is often seen as the “Wild West” where there are no (enforceable) laws. The perception is that Linux makes it easier to pirate software, music, video and other digitized IP products.

A frequent meme in piracy trash talking is that piracy is linked to malware (example). If your child is downloading pirated material (so the argument goes) they will be downloading it from a malware infected site and infecting their own computer resulting in poor performance, data loss and ID theft. A variant of this argument is that the downloads expose the kids to evil pornographers.

There is no equating software piracy, the theft and misuse of copyrighted software, with using open source, where the license specifically allows and encourages the redistribution of the software. Piracy violates the terms of the copyright and license. It's possible to do this with open source software as well, by not following the terms of the license.

In the world of electronic silicon number crunchers one of the primary structural components is the operating system. At the moment I would have to say the strongest operating system is Linux. I say this because out of all the operating systems I know, I believe the most flexible operating system is Linux.

Ars Technica's Ken Fisher suggested in his article, WGA failure highlights major flaw in Microsoft's anti-piracy strategy, that Microsoft needs a new "anti-piracy" strategy. I not only agree that they need a new strategy, I'll even go so far as to help them craft it.

Use virtualization software? Check out VirtualBox 2.1, which adds some exciting new features: Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems. Testing a 64-bit desktop is now much easier thanks to VirtualBox supporting 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts. It's pretty impressive that this is even possible!

As a beginner Linux user, I only recently realized that few people are aware or care that they are breaking U.S. law by using unlicensed codecs. Even fewer know that the codecs they use are unlicensed, or what to do about it.