I recently discovered an issue on
Twitter in regards to the unauthorized selling of pirated software. I
discovered this while doing promotions for one of the software
companies I support. While doing these promotions, I found a user on
Twitter who was marketing cracked copies of some of the most popular
programs to others at a fraction of the price via direct messages on Twitter.
This bothered me for 2 reasons. One, it
was interfering with people like myself who are helping to promote
legitimate sales of authentic software via the official companies,
and two, it was just very morally wrong.
It is one thing to illegally download a
software program for your own use, which is wrong to begin with, but
then to turn around and try to profit off that by selling it to
others is just taking it to another level of wrong.
I decided to try to do something about
it. I contacted some of the companies whose software was being
illegally sold on Twitter to let them know what was going on. Most of
them have an online form or email to report these things. I got a few
replies back thanking me for letting them know about it.
A few weeks went by and I noticed this
user was still actively trying to sell pirated software on Twitter. I
decided to contact Twitter about it directly. It was not very easy
and they requested personal information which I was not really
comfortable giving out, but I placed the report anyway.
A few days later they replied and
basically said they reviewed it and it does not violate their
policies. So basically what they are saying is they are ok with
people using their platform to illegally sell unauthorized copies of
software to others.
I was surprised that even after
contacting the makers of these programs, nothing seems to be getting
done to prevent this from continuing. It makes me think maybe
software piracy is a much bigger issue elsewhere and these companies
think it is not worth their time to try to stop one individual from
stealing from them.
Overall I am disappointed in Twitter
for not taking any action in this case and surprised that none of the
companies have yet to make an effort to stop this from happening.
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