[Wayne Luke]

Actually we spend tens of thousands of dollars because of Piracy on a monthly basis. There are lost support hours as they try to get support from us. There are lawsuits because the software is being used in an illegal manner and "we gave it to them". There is a full time lawyer on retainer. In the past, we have even caught one competitor using a pirated copy simply to copy features out of the software. However, the most widespread use of piracy is customers who purchase a single license and then power half a dozen or more forums on different sites with it.

The truth is that many actually purchase a copy when they are confronted with the fact that we know they have been running a pirated copy, usually within 24 hours of notification. However this is because they risk losing their data because we will have their providers pull the plug.

So we have had to come to some sort of compromise in making the software available. Either it can be visual source and we can track where it is running or we can encode it with Zend Encoder, which while lowering our potential marketshare lowers the risk of Piracy as well.