Many years have passed since the first pirates emerged on the sea, but they still exist and have expanded their reach. The meaning of the word "pirate" has changed and can now be defined as the person who illegally makes a copy of someone's property. Music, movies, books and software on hard media can be pirated by consumers. According to Gopal and Sanders (1998 381) computer piracy is the operation of simulating original software which is against the law for any purpose. Such illegal acts could have serious repercussions on industry and society. For example, software industry revenue losses due to piracy amounted to $12.8 billion in 1993 (Austin American-Statesman 1994). This shows that a large number of software products were pirated. Therefore, piracy represents a serious problem for the progress of the software industry and consumers. This essay will cover the causes and effects of software piracy. There are four main reasons why software piracy is easy and widespread: economic development, legislation, the reliability of pirated copies and consumer attitudes. Software piracy has an intellectual impact on society and a financial effect on the industry. This essay will also provide the combat process and analyze some proposed solutions in order to determine the effective solution. The history of software piracy begins in 1975, when Dan Sokol, a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, copied the BASE version of the programming language (Leinss n.d.). Since then piracy seems to have increased for years. For example, Givon et al. (1995 29) state that in 1995 in the United States 40% of software was pirated. However, as Gopal and Sanders (1998 381) inform, the percentage of illegal copies had risen to 70% in 1997. Italy and Spain had . ..... middle of paper ... pirated copies and consumer attitude were chosen as root causes. Software piracy problem caused by the integration of these factors, to address this problem all causes should be eliminated. Software piracy is considered a problem because it has harmful effects on the industry and users. It has been found that some attempts have been made to avoid this problem, but none of them have been totally effective. Software piracy is a long-term problem of the software industry and its solutions are highly controversial. To reduce the rate of piracy the government should think about the level of the economy and new legislation, monopolies should experiment with other protection devices and consumers should think more about the consequences of their choices. However, the market and society have adapted to the existence of software piracy, and piracy does not seem to always be bad, due to some benefits for the industry.