Sorry, Texrat is so right in his comment on mine. It was an utter crock.

**Software was never incredibly expensive.

**WordPerfect copy-protected its program, didn't have lots of disks, and didn't make frequent changes in its software so there were many changes.

**WordPerfect never did prosper, and what it did did not affect the software industry.

**The software industry DEPENDS on customers who are ethical robots. It's important for you to never, ever pirate anything. The sky will fall if you pirate, because everyone assumes that no one will pirate.

**Consumers are HAPPY to invest in software they have never tried and will willingly invest THOUSANDS of dollars in software in the hope that it might work.

**In particular, students should NEVER try out software just for the sake of learning. Companies that sell software do not WANT students to be familiar with it; they want students to go out into the world ignorant of what is available by virtue of not having tried it. A student who spends five minutes playing around with a software program he does not own is committing a HEINOUS CRIME!

Bill Gates NEVER WAS QUOTED AS SAYING

“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”

or

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

Thanks for setting me straight, Texrat.