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During the 8 and 16 bit home computing days, buying legit software in Portugal was almost impossible, even the boxes being sold at some stores were actually illegal copies, and it used to be common in the late 1990's that photocopy places near universities had catalogs with software to get copies from.

Eventually there was some crackdown from SPA in cooperation with the police forces, and most businesses nowadays run legit, however I will gladly bet than there are still plenty of business that do not, especially in small towns.

Also that we aren't the only country where it goes like that.



This article about software piracy in Italy in the 80s and 90s was linked here some time ago: https://genesistemple.com/a-swashbuckling-tale-of-italian-so... – seems to be very similar to your story in Portugal.

I don't think it was that extreme here in Germany, but I do recall my father coming home various times throughout the years with cases containing ~20-50 3.5" floppy disks for our Atari STs that were either completely unlabeled or with hand-written or home-printed labels. Always interesting finding out how to start each game and looking at the colourful intros.


Yep, exactly the same kind of stuff.

By the way there is a movie that touches this, but from movie industry side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_by_Erry

Back in the 8 bit days, the dream of each teenager was to get a double deck tape recorder, at least for those on Speccy side.

Years later on the Amiga, X-Copy was a must have.




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