Software Piracy Essay

1392 Words3 Pages

Software Piracy

Software piracy is the failure of a licensed user to adhere to the conditions of a software license or the unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted software by a person or entity that has not been licensed to use the software. Software piracy has become a household word and a household crime and has had a great affect on the software industry. It is a problem that can only be solved by the choices of each individual.
The computer software industry is one of the great business success stories of recent history, with healthy increases in both hardware and software sales around the world. However, software piracy threatens the industry's economic future. According …show more content…

The software industry loses more than $15.2 billion annually worldwide due to software piracy.
Software piracy costs the industry:

$482 every second
$28,900 every minute
$1.7 million every hour
$41.6 million every day
$291.5 million every week

To understand software piracy, one must get inside the mind of the pirate. People, who wouldn't think of sneaking merchandise out of a store or robbing a house, regularly obtain copies of computer programs which they haven't paid for. The pirate has a set of excuses for his actions: prices are too high; the company doesn't provide decent support; he's only going to use the program once in a while. Although, what really makes software piracy seem less bad than other kinds of theft is that nothing is physically taken. There is no immediate effect on the inventory or productive capacity of the creator of a piece of software if someone 500 miles away copies a disk and starts using it.
People tend to think of property as a material thing, and thus have a hard time regarding a computer program as property. However, property is not …show more content…

However, there is a more basic deterrent to theft than the risk of getting caught. A person can fake what he is to others, but not to himself. He knows that he is depending on other people's ignorance or willingness to pretend they haven't noticed. He may not feel guilty because of this, but he will always feel helpless and out of control. If he attempts to rationalize his actions, he becomes dependent on his own self-ignorance as well.
Thieves who abandon honesty often fall back on the idea of being smart.
They think it's stupid to buy something when they can just take it. They know that their own cleverness works only because of the stupidity of others who pay for what they buy. The thieves are counting on the failure of the very people whose successful efforts they use.
The best defense against software piracy lies neither in physical barriers to copying nor in stiffer penalties. The main prevention to theft in stores is not the presence of guards and magnetic detectors, but the fact that most people have no desire to steal. The best way to stop piracy is to instill

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