2.0 Arguments For Software Piracy Essay

Unlicensed software use continued to be a major problem in 2013. Indeed, 43 percent of the software installed on PCs around the world was not properly licensed, an uptick from 42 percent in 2011. The commercial value of the unlicensed installations was $62.7 billion. (The Compliance Gap, 2014). As we can see piracy of software and other digital media is a global problem that adversely affects many businesses and the welfare of employees and consumers.

In this paper we are going to examine why personal morality is an oxymoron and how a moral system is analogous to a game. Then we are going to analyze how the ethical issue of software piracy is seen from the notion of common moral system according to Gert.

Piracy is a concept that intrigues us all. Over time we he developed an idea of what piracy is like, such as the elaborate ships at sea, digging for treasure, and walking the plank. However, piracy has a long, rich history. There is much more to it than the romanticized storybook ideas of treasure maps and men with eyepatches and peg legs.

Signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "was the foundation of an effort by Congress to implement United States treaty obligations and to move the nation's copyright law into the digital age." ("Executive Summary DMCA Report") While this seems a valid description of the law, perhaps a more accurate interpretation lies in the following statement: "The DMCA is a piece of legislation rushed through Congress by the entertainment industry lobbyists to protect its monopoly on commercially-developed digital content, cartels, price-fixing, and to maintain its status quo as the single entity that can direct what should be 'popular' or 'used' by

Undeniably, studies reveals that price is undeniably one of the most important influences that encourage consumers to purchase pirated music CDs (Asif, 2013). However, the present study will look beyond the price factor when exploring consumers’ propensity to purchase pirated music CDs. The reason is that price is not an issue the music industries should or could address. This is because most pirated music CDs are often reproductions of original music CDs which attracts high rewards because of their cost of production and market development in addition to high quality. Hence, it does not make economic meaning for original music CDs manufacturers to compete with music piracy price.

Software piracy behaviors have been characterized as an instance of antisocial behavior, where it perceived to be relatively harmless since they do not result in direct, grievous physical harm to others, although the economic harm to software companies may be extremely large. Numerous studies have found that the unauthorized copying of software has received increased attention as a form of unethical behavior in recent years and has developed into a widespread problem (Siegfried,2004) .

We all know that downloading pirated music and films is illegal, but what exactly is it? The term piracy refers to the copying and selling of music, films and other media illegally; in other words you are copying and selling copyrighted media without the permission of the original owner (NiDirect, n.d.). With the massive growth of the internet and its ability to store and capture vast amounts of data, we have become much more reliable on information systems in all aspects of life, but it does not come without the risk of information technology being used unethically. With the number of IT breakthroughs in recent years “the importance of ethics and human values has been underemphasised” often resulting in various consequences. Not surprisingly one of the many public concerns about the ethical use of IT is that “millions of people have downloaded music and movies at no charge and in apparent violation of copyright laws at tremendous expense to the owners of those copyrights” (Reynolds, Ethics in Information Technology, 2015). This essay covers the ethical issues of downloading pirated music and films and the impact it has on music corporations and recording and film companies.

Diverse perspectives flood the market on the subject, ranging from the harsh accusation of legal precedent, to the methodical dissection and theoretical solution. Sebastian Anthony, author of the article “A Case for Piracy” being a prime example. Falling back on the philosophy of “No harm, no foul,” Anthony fends off the allegations of wrong piracy. Questioning the

Optical disk piracy is the production of optical disks that contain intellectual property that can be written and accessed from the disk. The copyright infringement of optical disk piracy is affecting the music industry, the movie industry, and the software industry. Optical disk piracy comes in the forms of CD, CD-R, DVD, and VCD. The music industry in China has lost an estimate of $600 million in revenues due to CD piracy, with the U.S. companies at $48 million.6 The pirated CDs either are counterfeited from the original CDs or a mix match of songs put together by the violators. This is a huge crisis for the domestic music industry with them only seeing a slight rise in revenue only in 2002.7 Next we have the CDs and CD-Rs that are causing a massive output of pirated software in China. There are licensed factories in China that actually create these pirated software CDs along with genuine ones to be sold to the public with the knowledge that they are violating the rights of the

57% of the worlds’ computer users confess to pirating or copying software according to a recent survey conducted by the BSA (Business Software Alliance). The top three countries with the highest piracy rates are Venezuela (88%), Indonesia (86%) and China (77%). According to the BSA, the commercial value of what the software industry has lost to theft now hovers around $63.4 billion, up from $58.8 billion in 2010. They claim one reason for such an increase in stolen software is due to a rise in PC shipments to developing countries with emerging economies – particularly Asia. Developing countries typically have a higher piracy rates than countries with matured economies. In

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This

On January 23, 2003, the world’s leading computer networking equipment maker Cisco Systems, headquartered in San Jose California, filed a lawsuit against China-based Huawei Technologies and its United States subsidiaries Huawei America and FutureWei Technologies. In the lawsuit, Cisco alleged that Huawei stole intellectual property by copying its Internet Operating System (IOS) software and its copyrighted user manuals. Cisco also claimed that Huawei infringed on its patents. After numerous failed attempts to resolve these complaints directly with Huawei, which included a cease and desist letter to one of Huawei’s United Kingdom distributors, Cisco decided that a lawsuit was necessary to

can become a virtual cash cow. Even selling a pirate cd on the cost of

In recent years, a major growing concern for the music industry is illegal downloading. Users go to sites like Napster or LimeWire and get songs without paying for them. This is made easy because the Internet makes it simple to share files peer-to-peer (“The Effects of the Internet and Digital Downloading on the Music Industry”). Copyrighted songs do not allow sharing this way, so this is and always has been illegal. However, since there is no real way to stop it, pirating of music still thrives (“The Effects of the Internet and Digital Downloading on the Music Industry”). In theory, when songs and albums are downloaded illegally, the music industry loses money; as people are not buying them and giving money to the artists. Despite this, some studies say that piracy is not harmful and may actually be beneficial to the music industry (“The Effects of the Industry and Digital Downloading on the Music Industry”). According to the European commission, “…findings indicate that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. His means that although there is trespassing of private property rights (copyrights), there is

The use of the internet to download and share music files is a very controversial issue. This topic is especially of interest to me because I download music quite frequently. To get a better look at how frequently students do this, and whether or not they feel it is ethical, I decided to conduct a survey. I conducted a ten question survey of twenty freshmen students. Distributed in Hanson Hall, and all freshmen dorm, the survey was very straightforward and asked questions dealing with how often students used file-sharing programs and whether or not they felt it was ethical to do so. Other questions dealt with alternative options to downloading music and the legal action that ensues doing so.