The widely publicized flap over the swapping and burning of music and video files has overshadowed an alarming situation that directly impacts everyone in the EDA community. Software pirates have sailed into the EDA seas and are operating almost with impunity. Today, you can buy counterfeit programs on any of several Web sites operating out of India, China, Taiwan and other places for a fraction of the cost of legitimate products. Believe it or not, a $5000 piece of EDA software can be "stolen" for as little as $180. I'm not talking about no-name stuff here. I'm talking about the likes of Cadence and Mentor, PADs and AutoCAD and, yes, Downstream Technologies, too. Imagine, 150 bucks for a copy of AutoCAD, which arrives in the mail on a CD. Maybe the thieves have cracked the code and are reselling at a huge discount under the legitimate label; maybe they've stolen and modified someone's code, bringing it out under a different label. In any case, it's bogus and anyone using it can get burned.
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