Warez is a term commonly applied by software pirates to software which has been stripped of its copy protection and made available on the internet for downloading.
The BSA said that the Austrian site had acted as a gateway redirecting visitors to 20 piracy sites hosted by 9 countries including Austria, Australia, France and the US. Now, it is not possible to access the warez.at site and a notice posted in its place by the BSA re-iterates “Adverstising, selling or distributing unlicensed software on the internet is illegal.”
The BSA hopes that closing the site will have a knock-on effect on the other pirated software suppliers that were benefiting from the redirected traffic.
The BSA acts on behalf of, amongst others, Microsoft, Symantec Corp, and Adobe Systems Inc. to crack down on the distribution of pirated software and, last year claimed to have disabled 1,800 piracy sites similar to warez.at. It claims to have 6,000 further sites under investigation at present.