If you have ever rented a movie you’ve seen the MPAA warning trailers. It usually starts out with a teen stealing a car or purse and then follows to ask the question ‘Would you steal a car? Would you steal a purse? Then why would you steal a movie?’. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) targets the end consumers and that is why you seen such a visible campaign.

The BSA (Business Software Alliance) mainly targets businesses that pirate software, so other than the failed music video of the 80′s “don’t copy that floppy”; there’s really no visible campaigns. However consumers can personally be targeted and if you repair computers and get paid for it, then you are a business. So the point is software piracy can escalate very quickly and you could find a BSA love letter in your mailbox.

Over the years I’ve developed a list of application substitutes that are entirely free and although they might not be exactly what they want, it serves the purpose and more so retains the business.

Windows XP – KMFMS
Anti Virus – Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus Free
Anti Virus – Clam AntiVirus For Windows
Anti Virus – Free BitDefender*
MS Office – Open Office
Spyware Removal – S&D SpyBot
Spyware Removal – Grisoft AVG Anti-Spyware Free
Spyware Protection – Microsoft Defender
Photoshop – The Gimp
WinZip & WinRAR – Filzip Archiver
Archiving Software – 7-zip Archiver
Archiving Software – Izarc Archiver
Screen Capture – Gadwin PrintScreen
PhotoCopier – Nicocuppen Photocopier
Acrobat PDF Creator - CutePDF
Network Sniffer – Wire Shark (Ethereal)
Photo Organizer – Google Picasa
Web Email – Google Gmail
Mapping – Google Earth
SSH Client – Putty Term
FTP Client – Filezilla
FTP Client – WinSCP
Autodesk 3D Max – Blender
Email Client – Thunderbird
Web Site Ripper – HTTrack
Serial Terminal – Tera Term
Serial Terminal – IVT VT220 Terminal
Acrobat Reader – Foxit Reader
Acrobat Reader – Acrobat Reader
BitTorrent Client – Azeurus
Encryption Utility – TrueCrypt
CD Burning – ISO Recorder
Virtual PC – Virtual PC 2004
Adobe Premiere – Windows Movie Maker
Microsoft Toys – PowerToys
Sysinternal Utilities – Rootkit Revealer, Autoruns, etc…
Anonymity Utilities – The Onion Router – TOR
TFTP Client – TFTPD32
NNTP Client – Xnews
Remote Control – RealVNC
OCR Software – Simple OCR
Font Viewer – The Font Thing
Icon Extractor – Icon Snatcher
Adobe Audition – Audacity
CDROM Catalog – DirHTML
Web Page Editor – Amaya
Web Page Editor – Nvu Editor

This list is as complete as I could make it. I will continually add new software to it. Hope this keeps you out of trouble.