Software Piracy in India and the Developed World
Introduction: Software Piracy in India
Software is one of the easiest and a very lucrative medium to steal. The copies made are as good as the original software and can be made quickly in large quantities. This makes it very difficult to effectively enforce anti-piracy laws, as the officials cannot raid each and every home in search of illegal copies of copyrighted software. In India, with a population of over 1 billion, effective enforcement of anti-piracy laws is a ponderous task.
The government of India possesses neither the will nor the finances to dedicate a chunk of its budget to enforcing copyright infringement laws. Another problem is that to control expenditure of monitoring and convicting such a huge number of offenders is a complicated and time consuming process. Latest figures show that the Personal Computer market in India is rocketing skywards. In the quarter ending December 31st, 2003, 800,000 units were sold.
Out of these 55 percent of the computer sales were of regional brands and unbranded systems. It should be noted that not all of these brands conform to software copyright laws as in the United States and Europe, or even in India. By the end of March 2004, an estimated 3 million personal computers are expected to sell. 2 The regional brands are the most responsible for propagating software piracy. In order to sell the computers cheap, pirated versions of software are installed on all machines sold. It can easily be deduced how much loss software piracy will cause the industry in the recent future.
The use of illegal or copied versions of software costs the worldwide software industry more than 13 Billion Dollars a year in revenues, out of which 1.96 billion dollars are lost in the US alone, which has a software piracy rate of 23 percent. In some East-Asian, Latin American and European countries, 95 percent of the software used is pirated. So, India is better off but still has a long way to go in the fight against software piracy.
India is unarguably one of the software hubs of the world, yet software piracy is rampant in this country. The software piracy rate in India is nearly 65 percent. No illegal activity of this scale can survive unless and until it has the support or involvement of a large number of users. The more concrete manner in which software piracy can be precluded is to pro-actively involve the public in the anti-piracy initiative.
“Sure. Thank you,” Mrs. Whitmore said. She waved good-bye and shut the door, then listened. When she heard only giggles, she relaxed her shoulders, and went into the kitchen to start on the cookies. When they were finished, she brought the plate up with two glasses of milk to Lucy-Lou’s room. The girls had stopped giggling, and Sarah was sitting across from Lucy-Lou on the other side of the room.
It is first beneficial to know the definition of piracy. Piracy has been characterized multiple ways from multiple disciplines. For the purpose of this paper, I will apply the definition of piracy from the 1982 United ...
A Worldwide Problem Software piracy is defined as the illegal copying of software for commercial or personal gain. Software companies have tried many methods to prevent piracy, with varying degrees of success. Several agencies like the Software Publishers Association and the Business Software Alliance have been formed to combat both worldwide and domestic piracy. Software piracy is an unresolved, worldwide problem, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. Software companies have used many different copy protection schemes. The most annoying form of copy protection is the use of a key disk. This type of copy protection requires the user to insert the original disk every time the program is run. It can be quite difficult to keep up with disks that are years old. The most common technique of copy protection requires the user to look up a word or phrase in the program's manual. This method is less annoying than other forms of copy protection, but it can be a nuisance having to locate the manual every time. Software pirates usually have no trouble "cracking" the program, which permanently removes the copy protection. After the invention of CD-ROM, which until lately was uncopyable, most software companies stopped placing copy protection in their programs. Instead, the companies are trying new methods of disc impression. 3M recently developed a new technology of disc impression which allows companies to imprint an image on the read side of a CD-ROM. This technology would not prevent pirates from copying the CD, but it would make a "bootleg" copy differ from the original and make the copy traceable by law enforcement officials (Estes 89). Sometimes, when a person uses a pirated program, there is a "virus" attached to the program. Viruses are self-replicating programs that, when activated, can damage a computer. These viruses are most commonly found on pirated computer games, placed there by some malignant computer programmer. In his January 1993 article, Chris O' Malley points out that if piracy was wiped out viruses would eventually disappear (O' Malley 60). There are ways that a thrifty consumer can save money on software without resorting to piracy. Computer companies often offer discounts on new software if a person has previously purchased an earlier version of the software. Competition between companies also drives prices low and keeps the number of pirated copies down (Morgan 45). People eventually tire or outgrow their software and decide to sell it.
With the boom of technology in China and the new capitalism ideas, China also has a huge piracy problem. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance's 2003 report on China, the piracy problem in China creates $1.85 billion in 2002 alone with 90% piracy rates for all copyrighted materials.5 This piracy problem affects negatively on China's global relations and economic improvements. China's current copyright laws are still in its teenage years, and the fast pace of technological advancement isn't helping either.
"4 Ways In Which Internet Piracy Can Be a Good Thing." MakeUseOf. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
“So, that’s what I want to do. You aren’t doing this to me no more. I’m telling my momma everything!”
The protection of trade in general has always been considered as essential to the defense of the commonwealth, and, upon that account, a necessary part of the duty of the executive power.
Because of its intangible nature, and particularly the increase of the digital domain and the internet as a whole, computers and cyber piracy make it easier for people to steal many forms of intellectual property. Due to this major threat, intellectual property rights owners’ should take every single measure to protect their rights. Unless these rights are either sold, exchanged, transferred, or appropriately licensed for use in exchange for a monetary fee, they should be protected at all cost. In order to protect these rights, the federal and states governments have passed numerous laws and statutes to protect intellectual property from misappropriation and infringement. “The source of federal copyright and patent law originates with the Copyright and Patent ...
Shultz II, C.J and Saporito, B. (1996), ‘Protecting Intellectual Property: Strategies and Recommendations to Deter Counterfeiting and Brand Piracy in Global Markets’, The Columbia Journal of World Business, 31(1): pp. 18-28.
paid for. The pirate has a set of excuses for his actions: prices are too high;
The PC industry is just over 20 years old. In those 20 years, both the quality
The first reason why downloading and uploading copyrighted materials from the Internet should be legal is that downloading copyrighted materials positively affects the economy. The European Commission Joint Research Center reported that the profits of music companies would be 2% lower if uploading and downloading copyrighted materials were banned. However, music companies are able to acquire more profits despite illegal downloading because many people tend to purchase CDs or DVDs after watching or listening to copyrighted materials for free. Moreover, the research showed that people who download music illegally spent more money to buy music than people who did not download illegally. In addition, research conducted by the Swiss government informed that one-third of Swiss people downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet because personal use of copyrighted materials is legal in Switzerland. Even though there is a fact that many people can download copyrighted materials from the Internet legally in Switzerland, the amount of money that people spend to buy copyrighted materials is not f...
All around the world people connected to the internet are downloading free digital content through P2P file sharing software.
From the results I was able to find out that music piracy does affect the music market by lowering the employment rate of the country as well as the total revenue received by the music market; however, the market has found other ways to protect their market like creating digital sales, which has worked as a way to increase revenue in the last 2 years.
One hour later Ruby and Chloe and came back to the camp at the forest. They enjoyed barbecues and roasted potato for dinner. Toward the end they had a warm hot scrumptious, delicious chocolate with a little whipped cream. Not long after that they went to rest.