Despite the occasional efforts of the HKSAR Government to promote Hong Kong as a knowledge-based economy, it’s a shameful fact that software piracy flourishes openly on Hong Kong’s high streets.
Most visibly, this takes the form of CDs on sale at trestle table stores containing obviously pirated brand name software at a fraction of the retail price of the real thing. More insidious, in some respects however, is another form of software piracy. This is the practice of computer retailers who are authorised members of software companies’ established retailing programmes installing on the computers they sell free copies of the very software they are meant to be retailing at full price.
This invisible form of piracy is so objectionable because it is carried out under the veil of a legitimate transaction and the buyer may not know, or may not feel, that he or she is doing anything wrong in accepting a PC with "free" software installed. But it amounts to intellectual property theft
