Warez is a term commonly applied by software pirates to software
which has been stripped of its copy protection and made available
on the internet for downloading.
The BSA said that the Austrian site had acted as a gateway
redirecting visitors to 20 piracy sites hosted by 9 countries
including Austria, Australia, France and the US. Now, it is not
possible to access the warez.at site and a notice posted in its
place by the BSA re-iterates “Adverstising, selling or distributing
unlicensed software on the internet is illegal.”
The BSA hopes that closing the site will have a knock-on effect
on the other pirated software suppliers that were benefiting from
the redirected traffic.
The BSA acts on behalf of, amongst others, Microsoft, Symantec
Corp, and Adobe Systems Inc. to crack down on the distribution of
pirated software and, last year claimed to have disabled 1,800
piracy sites similar to warez.at. It claims to have 6,000 further
sites under investigation at present.
