The Influences Of Software Piracy And Copyrighted Material

In the various media industries there are extreme worries concerning unauthorized downloading and copying of their products known as piracy. Piracy of items has been part of commerce for centuries; counterfeiting of currency for example. With the information age the ease at which media can be pirated has caused an explosion of this phenomenon. This practice is an illegal act that is done by individuals for personal use and also for profit. The first do not seem to see the issues caused by this practice such as; the spreading of viruses and lower quality products. We will use Reynolds' Seven-Step Ethical Decision Making Approach for the breakdown of the ethical reality of software piracy.

The Global music industry makes around $43.9 billion dollars a year. $12.5 billion of that is lost each year due to Piracy in the music industry and 70% of online users find nothing wrong with online piracy (“Music’s Last Decade: Sales Cut in Half”). Is it wrong? Is music piracy stealing? This topic is said to have inspired Charles W. Moore to illustrate these points in his essay. Charles W. Moore writes the essay “Is Music Piracy Stealing?” and tries to answer his own question. Moore starts off by explaining that current day pirates simply do not care about copyright laws. He goes into detail about the philosophy, ethics, and morality of the threat to the free exchange of music over the Internet. Moore says, “Digital copywriting is as serious and criminal as stealing a CD from a record shop or a DVD from a video shop” (242). The subject on piracy is a controversial and an argumentative subject. Although Moore gives many great examples throughout his essay, he also has some faulty reasoning such as the root question of his argument is not provable, his factual data is excessive, he has lousy introduction and closing paragraphs, and his views are biased.

Turmoil soon follows when the issue of piracy is brought into light. Piracy is defined as the act of downloading others work illegally, which includes but is not restricted to: movies, software, music and books. The music industry constantly sparks this discussion among the masses for obvious reasons. Those opposing mainly being the consumers, whose connection is strictly enjoying the work put before them, rather than benefiting financially in a discernible way. Using the term industry to describe the active relationship of business and money embedded into our abstract concept of society. Only when downloading is done for free does the question arise; is this right?

Piracy, in music industry, is a huge problem that gets worse instead of getting better. According to The Guardian newspaper, 90% people between 14-25 years old, make music copy. Most of these copies are made in MP3 for personal music collections. The growing average was 300% in the last two year, in comparation to 150% of growing in two years previus. All of this, shows piracy is unstoppable.

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

The effects of piracy are felt by everyone. “There were 130,000 jobs lost due to piracy in the U.S. alone in 1996”. Let’s say that trend has held relatively steady over the past 8 years. That would mean that over 1 million jobs have been

In 2013, game development company, Greenheart Games, released their game, Game Dev Tycoon, alongside a cracked version of it “on the number one torrent sharing site.” This revealed that within a day of the game release, 93.6% of users playing their game were using the cracked version that they uploaded” (Klug). These stats are terrifying when trying to make a successful business on a digital platform. Seeing that a majority of industries make some revenue off the internet, piracy is something that must decrease in order for more businesses to make a profit on this relatively new platform. Piracy has been a concern for much longer than the internet as “[i]nventions such as the photocopier, CD burners, and the Internet has made the copying of books, music, and movies inexpensive and easy and the enforcement of copyright more difficult” (Adermon). This has only increased due to the accessibility of the internet. In order to decrease piracy, one must first understand why it happens in the first place. The main reasons for people to resort to piracy rather than the legitimate acquisition of products is that piracy is free, piracy is more convenient, and piracy is anonymous. There are many ways to try to counteract these positives of pirating, but with such a large number of pirated digital goods, how is it even possible to lower the effects of piracy?

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

At no cost or free access to any information brings many benefits to users through online piracy. When anyone downloads a program from an online source they use it as a preview or free trial when none are available. People do this in order to see what they want is worth the purchase or not. For example: Someone has no clue what word processing program to buy and he or she does not want to just waste the money on a word processing program he or she cannot use. This is where internet piracy can come in to play and benefit him or her greatly. He or she can just download the word processing programs they have been looking at from an online source to use as a free trial, find the best one, and later buy it.

In 2013, game developing company Greenheart Games released their game, Game Dev Tycoon, alongside a cracked version of it “on the number one torrent sharing site.” This revealed that within a day of the game release, 93.6% of users playing their game were using the cracked version that they uploaded” (Klug). These stats are terrifying when trying to make a successful business on a digital platform. As a majority of industries make some part of their revenue off of the internet, piracy is something that must decrease in order for more businesses to make profit on this relatively new platform. Piracy has been a concern for much longer than the internet as “[i]nventions such as the photocopier, CD burners, and the Internet has made the copying of books, music, and movies inexpensive and easy and the enforcement of copyright more difficult” (Adermon). This has only increased due to the accessibility of the internet. But in order to decrease piracy, one must first understand why it happens in the first place. The main reasons for people to resort to piracy rather than the legitimate acquisition of products is that piracy is free, piracy is more convenient, and piracy is anonymous. There are many ways to try to counteract these positives of pirating, but with such a large number of pirated digital goods, how is it even possible to lower the effects of piracy?

In todays digital age it had become easier to download and distribute media. Many individuals have continued to evaluate whether or not punishments for media piracy are harsh enough. This essay will discuss the strengths and weakness of allowing the punishment to stay the same for media piracy. It will also demonstrate why increasing the punishment will have a negative effect on society.

Over time, modern-day society has experienced an exponential growth in theft and dishonest behavior. Alongside the development and evolution of technology, individuals are continually strategizing criminal activity of the next generation. More specifically, cybercrime, or a crime committed via the internet or computer network, has gained popularity (Microsoft News Center, 2013). With the click of a button, individuals are able to obtain unlawful copies of software, personal information, identities, and copyrighted content. Widely recognized, software piracy has become an attractive alternative for individuals who do not wish to pay for various types of licensed software or programs. The large population and intelligence of software pirates has hindered the legal process, allowing the majority of offenders to act without retribution. As a result, software piracy has developed a reputation that is misconceived as victimless and harmless. However, the true outcome of software piracy is devastating, affecting millions of employees, businesses, and computer users across the globe (Santillanes & Felder, 2015). With the potential negative impact on the global economy, software piracy is an act of unscrupulous behavior. In fact, software piracy is not a victimless crime, as the outcome of such is absorbed by developers, merchants, and consumers around the world.

In an effort to protect the intellectual property of developers, companies place copyright restraints on distributed software and applications. By purchasing programs, computer users contribute to software development, acknowledging and compensating program designers for their work. Computer users who properly purchase software contribute to the salary of developers, revenue of companies, and growth of the economy (Andrés & Goel, 2012). Nonetheless, software pirates avoid paying for software and programs. According to the Microsoft Corporation, end-user fraud, pre-installed software theft, illegal software downloads, software counterfeiting, and online software auctioning are all considered to be forms of software piracy (“How Piracy Affects You,” 2015). The ignorance and selfishness of software pirates pose significant risks to software developers, for software companies are often forced to downsize as a result of revenue loss. Innocent developers are eliminated from the workforce as a direct result of illegal software reproduction and distribution. Software pirates jeopardize the employment, salary, and intellectual property rights of developers. In order to combat software piracy, companies will frequently direct the focus of software development to software protection. As a result of changing priorities, companies face substantial additional losses in

This report will discuss for and against software piracy, weather it is acceptable to pirate software and the affects piracy has on the end user and businesses.

A new emerging view has also arisen out of this predicament. This stance argues that piracy has had a positive effect on all of the industries it has affected. One idea is that those who pirate materials and enjoy them are likely to advertise via word of mouth. Those people who pirate materials are likely to spread good word about them, if they are truly good, and therefore other may hear these reviews and go and purchase the content for themselves. Sometimes piracy leads users to a “try before you buy” mentality which helps consumers decide whether or not they want to purchase an item. For example, someone might pirate a movie to see what their first impression is, then go see it in theaters for the experience. This is true for other media as well.