Essay on Software Piracy

Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That’s what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.(Tassi)

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.

Since the inception of the personal computer, piracy and software has been a problem faced by many software publishers. In the early days of the modern computer, virtually all computers had a floppy drive, and program's executable and library files were seamlessly transferred from the hard drive or the software diskette to a blank floppy disk. Friends and colleagues would then get access to the costly software free-of-charge, or worse, multiple copies would be made of that program to later be sold for a fraction of the retail price, with the publisher seeing none of the money. It was already becoming a problem in the early 1990s, that the Software Publishers Alliance had produced a promotional video, Don't Copy That Floppy, to spread awareness of the implications pertaining to pirating software. A similar promotional video, Don't Copy That 2, was released in 2008 as a reminder, mainly targeting the younger generation and college students.

Internet piracy is a hot-button topic, but it is not one that we should take lightly. We as a nation need to quell the distribution of these stolen materials. Imagine if someone pirated teaching videos online to learn for free? Then what would happen to teachers? Where would we be without libraries and their indispensable resources? The days of Blackbeard may be gone, but if we, as a nation, fail to take action, well, we are in for some stormy

The increase is piracy has led to educating people through campaigns, which will mean in future that the piracy should decrease as knowledge increases

To begin with, pirating has a very rich, and long history that traces back to ancient Greek times. With the progression of trade between empires came the development of piracy. The oldest mention dates back to 1350 B.C. Inscriptions on a clay tablet describe Mediterranean ships being attacked in North Africa. Greek merchants that traded in Phoenician and Anatolian

Economically, $12.5 billion in losses each year is due to piracy in the music industry, $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings are lost each year due to online piracy and almost 71,000 jobs are lost in the United States every year due to online piracy as well. It may seem that these numbers are horrifying, but one statistic proves otherwise. In the statistics for the highest and lowest piracy rates in 2010, the United States comes up the very top of the lowest piracy percentage, only accounting for 20% of media downloaded from the Internet. Most consumers in the U.S. obtain their media legally because they support their artists. They realize that artists are also people working and making their craft just like everyone else. Consumers may download the songs illegally, but if they really loved the album, they would buy the real deal.

Piracy is already illegal and punished with heavy fines and possible jail time. Yet piracy still accounts for 23.76% of the total internet bandwidth worldwide.("Safe Internet", 1) This percentage is growing and is costing product creators more and more. Meaning product creators are finding a hard time to make new products when their sales are

Software has a big part in cybersecurity and it is tampered with quite frequently. When software is stolen, copied, or even borrowed it is considered pirating. Computer software is a "written expression that is protected by United States copyright laws." (Marshall). These written expressions are protected by the federal and state laws which were made for them (Marshall). Software pirating is illegal, and in the United States, if somebody is caught pirating software the government has made software pirating a felony rather than a misdemeanor (Marshall). Although the United States government makes pirating illegal, the American software developers do not make much of an effort, if

When very few measures to defend against piracy are implemented, it simply encourages piracy across the world because there is essentially less risk associated with it.

In recent years, Chinese government has also made great effort in executing these laws[1, 12]. Chinese government launched different anti-piracy campaigns almost every year. During these campaigns, Chinese government raided underground markets, confiscated million copies of pirate software, closed factories of manufacturing counterfeit intellectual products and destroyed hundred product lines. In order to fight against piracy more effectively, China established her first national anti-piracy organization, Anti-Piracy Committee, in October 2002[5]. Besides, Chinese Courts granted favor to many international companies in their case to sue Chinese companies for illegally using their patents, copyrights and other intellectual properties[1, 4, 10]. For example, Microsoft sued two Chinese companies for such abuse and won its case in a Beijing court in February 1999[10].

The technology development of computer and communication led to increase the illegal downloading of digital multimedia (e.g. music). In general, there is no change in the behavior of buyers, but starting of internet network and uprising of computerized systems, result in latest rise in piracy.

Intellectual property is very important as American business continues to expand and develops. Businesses are now attempting to penetrate foreign markets which are unique in their laws, customers and beliefs. As such, it is important for business to protect the intellectual capital that made their operations thrive and flourish. It is the nature of capitalism to copy or mimic successful products. It is when companies outright copy a trademark or patented process that complications arise. Intellectual property is no different in this regard. China specifically, has been notorious for infringing on American companies intellectual capital. WIPO defines refers to counterfeiting as "infringement on trademarks," and piracy as "infringement on copyright or related acts (Jacobson, 2008)." 5 to 7 percent of all world trade is comprised of piracy and counterfeiting. Piracy rates within China were at an alarming 92% ( Cheng, 2011).Nearly 1.3 Billion people now live in China, of which approximately 90% of them pirate software or commit other versions of cybercrime against intellectual property. The likelihood of actually getting caught for this offense is unlikely due in part to the sheer volume of citizens within the country. Would it be practical or even worthwhile to catch every small business counterfeiter within China? If so, what is to prevent another person from committing the same offense? With the ease of access to technology, I believe that literally any one of the 1.3

Such policy seems to be working with plagiarism at e.g. Universities, but in term of intellectual property the intangible aspect of the product makes it more difficult to control. Therefore stopping online piracy is easier said than done, as it would require enormous human resources from a government to track down illegal websites and taking a legal action against them leading to the closure. One case study worth following regarding this issue was on the major streaming website TV SHACK.net has been seized many times by the US government and it kept changing the domain addresses to overseas addresses as .co or .bz. The owner, 23 year old student Richard O’Dwyer from Sheffield has been charged with copyright infringement and the US Justice Department has been seeking to extradite him from the UK since May 2011 – BBC reports. Streaming itself is a grey area in many countries, i.e. Germany, where it is not perceived as downloading but has been sourced using illegal means. Compared with the legal issues and the fact that the content was stored on foreign servers the law enforcement was extremely difficult, but now it has been set an example worldwide of tackling with piracy. On entering the internet address now a video clip displays which in a humoristic educated people on what piracy is and how much a “free” movie really cost. Such attempt is one of the suggested ways in dealing with piracy through

The depth of China’s involvement in intellectual property theft is far greater than I would have ever expected. Prior to taking the business law course, I never thought about what intellectual property theft was or the impacts that it has. The report of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, states that “China is the world’s largest source of Intellectual Property theft” (pg 10 & 11) costing the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year, along with millions of jobs.