How did Piracy Affect Atari computers?

Software piracy (the unauthorized distribution of software) has been around since the dawn of personal computers. There were those that felt all computer software should be free and there were others that felt that software should be sold just as any other product.

In fact, one of the first software products for personal computers, Microsoft BASIC for the Altair, was pirated so much that in 1976 Bill Gates wrote “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” about it!

Although this was a problem for the nascent software industry and small new companies such as Microsoft, computers were used by so few people that it was not something that the average person knew or cared about.