The Effect Of Software Piracy

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

In the global market that we leave in companies are trying to find any and everyway that they can to get ahead in their respective markets. This most of the time brings out the most innovate thinkers that can come up with a way to keep it’s company on top of their market and sometimes we see that there are companies that like to take a short cut by using non legal and malicious methods. According to Lewis, (1985), Software piracy is the illicit copying of the operating instructions and applications programs, which make computers work, is a large and growing industry. The Pirate Bay is part of a European social and political movement that opposes copyrighted content and demands that music, videos, TV shows, and other digital content be free and unrestricted. In the words of the Pirate Party, “the Pirate Bay is a unique platform for distributing culture between regular people and independent artists, and that’s something we want to preserve.”

Bill Gates and his company prosecuted many individuals and companies for software theft to show the world that intellectual property cannot be stolen without punishment. In 1998 Gates noticed that there was a huge gap between the number of computers being sold each year and the number of computer software. He quickly realized that many people were stealing computer software online. Gates knew that using computer software without paying was illegal and he intended to make everyone that stole their software pay the price for their crime. When Microsoft first discovered that their software was being stolen they decided that if people were going to steal software then they should steal Microsoft’s software and eventually Gates would find a way to collect money from his stolen property. Microsoft went after over 80 companies that they discovered were using their computer software without purchasing it and they pressed legal action and in the end got the money they had earned (Down to Earth). Before Microsoft prosecuted these companies for illegally downloading software, stealing intellectual property online was not considered important and legal action was almost never taken against those who committed the theft. Thanks to Bill Gates and his company intellectual theft is now taken

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.

There are some other issues like Piracy which prevail in the entertainment industry which estimated cost the US economy $20 billion per year. Piracy prevents the people in this industry to not get their full royalty for their intellectual talents.

Piracy in the Golden Age devastated the trade economy. Hundreds of ships carrying numerous amounts of goods were plundered. Today, piracy hardly dents the two trillion dollar a year shipping industry. In 1997 losses amounted to “$.32 for every $10,000” J. Gottschalk. This leaves little financial incentive for companies to deal with the problem.

First, Online Piracy hurts many people but the most important are the downloaders. People tend to not talk about the fact that not only does it hurt others, it also opens the downloader's computer and sensitive documents to threat. As said in the Info Sheet, "When you participate in peer-to-peer networks private and sensitive documents on your computer

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) published a report which showed that movie piracy alone cost the Australian economy $1.37 billion revenue per annum. More than $193 million of this amount is the loss of government tax revenue due to the 92 million tax free pirated movies. Consequently, this greatly reduces the funds available by the Australian taxing government to spend on Australian communities.

Accordingly, starting with the overall piracy insurance cost estimate, the authors created a “rough estimate” (15) for 2010 of $460 million to $3.2 billion. After some push-back from the insurance industry, they were able to acquire more data from multiple resources and revised the cost estimate at $635 million for the year 2011 (16). The authors assumed that the insurance resources were correct in their assessment that the cost estimate was in fact excessive. Bowden and Basnet stated they felt more comfortable with this new estimate to “further develop the precision of [their] study” (15). In reality, it is still an estimate. Using further assumptions, they derived at the new insurance cost estimate.

It affects more than they realize - Piracy is not a victimless crime. The mainstream media needs to do its part and demonize those that offend. This would be the quickest way to stop the flow of these stolen materials from having a broader reach and hope to deter those who distribute. Remember the popularity of music group Milli Vanilli? No? That’s because after their lip-syncing scandal they were attacked by the press and were unable to continue recording without public backlash. I hope that this would work similarly for these vile and deplorable individuals. In conjunction with the federal punishment, the individuals should receive a lifetime ban from listening to all music, and receive another large fine if they are caught in violation.

Research and summarize the lost sales and/or profits caused by a particular situation of illegal copying or piracy of software, music, or video. You should provide the dollar amount of lost sales and/or profits over a given time period to a specific industry, country, firm, or individual. You must use an article or other published source for credibility, not just a forum or message board. Note that some controversy exists in this area; for up to 5 extra credit points you may write a paragraph that summarizes why piracy does not result in significant lost sales (again from a credible

Piracy has caused many business to innovate to keep up with the threat of digital piracy

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.

Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to accurately track the revenues or the money lost from the piracy market. This is because like any black market, it goes undetected. However it is like the big elephant in the room, it definitely exists. However, just because I know it exists doesn’t mean I know how to interpret the results

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