Earlier today, I read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter to Hobbyists. It was written to early computer hobbyists. In the letter, Gates talked about how his company and his partners were getting negatively impacted by the widespread copyright infringement of his Altair BASIC software which had taken his team so long to create.

Overall, I wholeheartedly agree with Mister Bill Gates’ message. While piracy and copyright infringement may not affect huge corporations like Google, Electronic Arts, etc., I cannot imagine the extent of an impact this may have on smaller companies and teams, working so hard for so long, with little pay and not as many programmers, designers, and so on, only to have a large proportion of your money being taken away! This letter obviously had a huge impact at the time, as it was probably one of the earliest times the issue of copyright infringement of software was discussed, a now commonplace topic in the field of technology.
I applaud Bill Gates for his early on efforts back then, and believe that his words should definitely be heeded, especially in an online piracy filled world such as today!
LINK TO LETTER: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists#mediaviewer/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobbyists.jpg