How Serious Is Software Piracy - Essay Example

How serious is software piracy Software piracy has become a serious issue because many software companies lose their revenue through piracy. Software piracy is easy because of the way in which software’s can be shared. When a friend buys software you can share with him because machines accept software’s to be shared. Apart from sharing, hackers have gotten a way in which they can download software’s from the only by cracking the producing companies websites. There are many ways in which piracy is carried out, sharing discs with one another and installing the software on more than one computer because license allows software in one disc to be installed in one machine. According to Microsoft Company, software piracy has become a large scale distribution of software’s through online. Many piracy groups are linked to illegal activities such as money-laundering, gambling, prostitution, and organized crime. This software’s are mainly sold in retail stores and through online sites their packaging normally looks genuine and the users will tend to buy not knowing that they are fake. Internet piracy is one way in which illegal software’s are sold. For example in Net jargon, they use the tem wares to refer to pirated product. Some of these products have even been modified to eliminate serial numbers, registration needs, date of expiry, and or any other king of software protection. Software piracy is a very serious issue because companies have continued to lose large sums of revenue. According to Business software alliance (BSA), 130 billion dollars of software’s was legitimately sold while 50 billion dollars of software’s was sold in an illegitimate way. Organizations that produce and sell software’s have claimed that software piracy has a negative effect on the economy of many countries. The production of software’s is one of the main contributors of economy, it employs over 300, 000 people and provide billion of dollars in terms of revenue to the federal government. It has fueled economic development in countries like China and India. The impact of piracy in terms of economy according to the study carried out by BSA is that if global piracy is reduced by ten percent over a period of 4 years, it will create over 500, 000 new jobs and it will generate an extra of $140 billion globally. A decrease in revenue for software companies will have a direct effect on consumers also. When the revenue goes down, the company will be forced to reduce consumer services and technical support. This will result in inefficiency and poor services from the companies, for example, when a customer call requiring services there will be few customer service representative and it might take long before a customer is attended to and customer representative who will be available might have moderate knowledge on what the customer requires. Another negative is that some software companies might decide to build the cost of software piracy in to the price of the legitimate software. This means that a consumer who will be willing to buy an original product will have to pay an inflated price so as to cover for those who buy pirated products. In general, software piracy will negatively affect customers’ services. Another danger of pirating software is that some pirated software’s makes computers vulnerable and this will make hackers access personal information such as banking details, email accounts passwords and many others. Once they get these details they will either sell it or perpetrate commercial crimes. Some of these software’s can make your computer crash. When a system crash, valuable information can be easily lost and some of the information might not be replaceable. They may also contain some spyware which will loads into the computer and it will start reporting personal information and other valuable information without the owner knowing. Software publishers provide patches that will fix software vulnerability because cyber criminals will always try to find vulnerabilities in software’s. Pirated software’s does not have updates that will help in fixing the problem and it will make the computer become vulnerable for attacks. An instance for software piracy was in 2004 when U.S military pirated Apptricity software. Apptricty software is a kind of software when installed on certain special devices it will help in tracking the soldiers especially when they are in the battle field. Apptricity Company was hired by U.S to help install the software in their servers. The company installed the software to a certain number of servers but the military went ahead and installs the program on extra 100 servers and 9, 000 thousand devices without paying. The matter was never known until in 2011, when inventory reports shows inconsistencies in the number of servers and devices that was originally installed and the existing number that have the software. When this was found, the military tried to avoid paying the extra amount by tampering with the software. The government purchased the servers and devices in 2004 at a cost of $4.5 million and purchased another lot 5 years later. The company went to court and they won the case and the government was forced to pay $50 million to settle the copyright infringement. Software pirates understand very well that what they are doing is illegal. Every country has a law that touches on copyright infringements. For people to be aware about this, the software publishers have been carrying out public awareness on the negatives of software piracy and the penalties that will accompany it if you are found pirating any software. That means every person must have gotten information about this. The copyright laws of U.S encourage the creation of art and culture by rewarding the producers with a set of exclusive rights. The laws grants the producers of books, artist, and other products such as software’s a right to make and sell copies of their work and right to make derivative work. The laws are governed by federal Copyright Act of 1976. The constitution gives powers to congress to create these laws. Everybody understands the laws of the country and those pirating the software’s must be aware of this. There have been cases involving software piracy and most of these cases are being published and reported in the media, this also shows that those pirating the software’s must have come across this or hear about it. Try it The study on piracy covers a period between 2011 and 2013. In 2011 software piracy was 42 percent and it jump to 43 percent in 2013, the finding underscores the need to adopt a better way of managing software piracy. In terms of regions, the region with the highest overall rate of software piracy is Asia pacific with 62 percent and the region with the lowest rate of software piracy is North America with 19 percent. The three countries with the highest software piracy is Venezuela, Indonesia, and China, the rate of software piracy is 88, 86, and 77 percent respectively. The cost of Microsoft office 365 personal in U.S is $7. Per annual income in Bangladesh is $1, 050. The percentage of Bangladesh income that is required to purchase Microsoft office is 7/1050 = 0.007. The percentage of Bangladesh that he will have to pay is 0.7 percent. The questions provided me with good experience in exploring what is the motives of those carrying out piracy and why piracy should be stopped. The YouTube links I consider useful is Computer Ethics- Online Privacy, link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFfYxgDpRo Anti-Software Piracy Ad Campaign, link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie5c5MzRRVo IS-201 AD Presentation against Software Piracy, link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEQMMkSJ-Es The YouTube links that the students will consider lame is Hilarious Dara OBriain Moment - Anti Piracy Ads, link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bxqt0siy34 The sites for reporting software piracy are https://www.riaa.com/reportpiracy.php http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/ipr http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/piracy/reporting/default.aspx https://reporting.bsa.org/r/report/add.aspx?src=us&ln=en-us http://takedownpiracy.com/tips/ Works cited Parsons, June J, and Dan Oja. New Perspectives on Computer Concepts 2014. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, 2013. Print. I.T News Africa. Software piracy a serious issue – Microsoft. Available at http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2013/04/software-piracy-a-serious-issue-microsoft/ Craig, Paul, Ron Honick, and Mark Burnett. Software Piracy Exposed. Rockland, MA: Syngress, 2005. Internet resource. Schultz, Robert A. "Copyright and Piracy." (2006). Print. Ding, Hong, and Xiaofeng Zhang. "Software Piracy Prevention: Punish Buyer or Seller?" (2012). Print. Norton. The dangers of counterfeit software. Available at http://us.norton.com/how-to-be-pirate- free/article Piquero, Nicole, and Alex Piquero. "Democracy and Intellectual Property: Examining Trajectories of Software Piracy." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 605.1 (2006): 104-127. Print. Read More