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Warez

Vangie Beal
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:58 am

Pronounced wayrz or wayrss. Commercial software that has been pirated and made available to the public via a BBS or the Internet. Typically, the pirate has figured out a way to de-activate the copy-protection or registration scheme used by the software. Note that the use and distribution of warez software is illegal.

In contrast, shareware and freeware may be freely copied and distributed.