We conclude our in-depth look at the problem of software piracy with a look at what, if anything, can be done to stop pirates in the future.
Paul Rose

Software piracy isn't all about dodgy compilation CDs being flogged at car boot sales; you may have broken software copyright laws yourself, without even realising it. Was Windows 98 already installed on your PC when you bought it? If the retailer never gave you the original CD then you're both lawbreakers. Same for that copy of Adobe Photoshop your mate 'borrowed' from work and installed for you a few weeks ago. However, in recent years yet another threat, potentially even more odious, has risen to vex the brains of the entertainment industry: the Internet. Specifically, in the case of the games industry, it's Internet emulation that's spitting in its soup.

Still very much a legal grey area as far as most people are concerned, hardware emulation first rose in popularity at the beginning of the '90s. This was down to bedroom programmers recreating the internal gubbins of the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum to play games for those defunct formats on their PCs or Amigas. The emulation scene is now big news on the Internet, with MAME - the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator - the most popular of several downloadable emulators which allow you to play classic arcade titles on your PC. Now the Spectrum and Commodore emulators, along with MAME, have been joined by a new breed of software emulating more current game systems.

The Mega Drive, Super NES, Game Boy, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 have all been cracked, with complete game code ROMs easily available over the Net. Officially, you're perfectly entitled to own the code if you actually own an original copy of the game. However, out of the hundreds of thousands of Internet users regularly downloading ROMs, how many do you think abide by this rule? Probably less than 12 of them.