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Software Piracy and it's Effects
Identification and Description of the Issue
Copyright law are perhaps those laws which are breached the most by individual on a daily bases. This is because one might not know be informed about these law or because not much is done to enforce these law. Also some countries of the world have no Copyright laws. Software Piracy is a breach of a copyright law as one copies data contained on the medium on to another medium without the consent of the owner of the Software. When one buy a software one buys not the software content and therefore it isn't ones property. Instead one buy the license to use the software with accordance to the licensing agreement. Software companies invest a lot of time and money in creating a Software and the company rely upon the sales of the Software for it's survival. If illegal copies are made of
Software the companies earns no money and could therefore be forced into bankruptcy. Software Piracy can be compared to robbing as one is stealing the goods of someone else and using it without paying for it. Up to 13 Billions dollars are lost in computer piracy yearly and in order to overcome these cost the company are force to rise the prices of their product. Brand name are properties of their respected companies and they have the right to protect their properties. Understanding of the IT background of the Issue
Software is contained on disc or on a CD-ROM. Pirates copy can easily be made of
Software on disc by copying from one disc to another disc. For CD-ROM one needs a CD-ROM burner or one copies the content onto a large hard disc and then on to a floppy disc. There are some underground bulletin boards ( BBS ) that contain pirate software. A user who logs on to one of these BBS can download Full version of Pirate Software provided one too can give something in return. On the Internet there are binary Newsgroup such as alt.binaries.warez, WWW pages and FTP sites that also contain Pirate Software. On the Newsgroup the Files are send upon request from anonymous users. As a result people who have access to the Internet can retrieve these Software Program free of charge. The person posting the Pirate software could be from a countries that has no copyright laws.
These methods used in Software Piracy are hard to stop because of the fact it is done on the Internet and between individual form different co...
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...e it to unlikely that any new copy protection will not be cracked. To much copy protection could drive away legitimate consumers. Till now politician haven't really looked into the problem of Software piracy and Copyrights very thoroughly as they think that there are bigger problems to solve. Once though legislation are passes and people made aware that Software Piracy is a crime one could see a fall in Software Piracy.
In dealing with other country involves a lot of bureaucracy but also a committed government. For anything to occur on the political level could take years for any effects to be seen. It has the greatest chance of solving the problem in the long run. In the technological side one could solve the problem only one a short term but implementation would be fast.
Sources
Internet Page WWW.pcworld.com/News December 96 Business Software Alliance
Information Sheet on Software Piracy Computer Ethics Tom Forester &Perry
Morrison Chapter3 "Software Theft" page 51-72 CNN Computer Connection December
96 - January 97 PC Magazine entire 96 Volume Reuters InfoWorld, Vol.19, No.6
Reuters 6 Feb. 97 Media Daily, Jan 30, 1997 Article on FBI crackdown on Software
Pirates
12. DVDs are digital versatile disc, optical discs used to externally store data. DVDs have higher recording and retrieving speeds, are better suited for backing up information, and have higher capacity per device than
An option that copyright owners have considered toward protecting their works from circulating in P2P networks is to use a variety of technological tools to prevent piracy. Such tools would be capable of blocking, decoying and redirecting the connections of unauthorized copyrighted file transfers. However, federal and state laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of ...
regular CD. For all practical purposes, mp3 files can be exact, near-perfect digital copies of the
There are many people that speed on freeways and throughout the streets without thinking of the consequences that could possibly happen.There are many lives taken by car crashes every day either because the driver was not paying attention,was drunk,or was speeding so they couldn’t stop in time.I have seen many car crashes that have caused fatal injuries because one or both drivers weren’t careful enough and did not follow the law.These laws were put into effect for a reason,to protect the people of America and make them feel safe anywhere that they go.If there were no laws,the world would be full of pure chaos and anarchy and there would be no balance. Every decision that someone makes in life,including following the law,can have a drastic impact on their life and other people’s lives as
In December of 1999, Microsoft, the world’s largest and most dominant software company set a new legal precedence in China in the landmark case of Microsoft Corporation ( China), Ltd. V. Beijing Yadu Science and Technology Group. The law suit caused an uproar among numerous Chinese consumers because for the first time in China, “a major foreign software manufacturer went directly after an end user for copyright infringement in China” instead of just the people who manufactures and sells the counterfeit software. 3 At first glance, it is easy for many Americans in the United States to simply say this case is nothing more than a matter of right and wrong, black and white. The obvious argument would seem to be that if you use something without paying for it, then it constitute stealing. Without a doubt, stealing is universally regarded as wrong in every country and in every culture. However, in a case such as this, we are not dealing straight forward laws.
"4 Ways In Which Internet Piracy Can Be a Good Thing." MakeUseOf. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
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.
The world is safer with laws and would be a lot safer if people obeyed
Consumer software programs are compiled and translated into machine language before they are sold. Some manufacturers provide source code, but usually only programmers find the source code useful. Thus programs bought off the shelf can be executed, but usually their source code cannot be read or modified.
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
copyrighted software by a person or entity that has not been licensed to use the
and distributing it or installing more than one copy of one piece of software on
Online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem huge: $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010 (Freakonomics). In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “can be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which in English means these figures are legitimate and that piracy really does hurt our economy.
It's important to understand the different software piracy channels, not just to comply with the law but also to protect against bigger economic problems like lost revenue...and lost jobs.
All around the world people connected to the internet are downloading free digital content through P2P file sharing software.