by Pooka

Created on: May 12, 2008

Software Piracy

Technology advances and electronics become more complex. Cell phones continue to grow smaller and smaller, yet contain more and more features! Television sets that once clustered half a kitchen counter now rest easily on the wall as a thirty-two inch plasma screen painting. Every day brings an advance in technology that changes the world around us. Thus in this confusing age of technology, crimes have turned electronic and more complicated and questionable than ever before. The theft of software, music, games, programs, stories, movies, all things that literally cost nothing for their creators and distributors to lose, all things that are being stolen in record number.

It is that very question of crime that makes software piracy so prominent. It doesn't cost a thing for a company to lose an electronic copy of data. Though big business claim it as a theft, a sale that can now never be made. The law is siding more and more with big companies, but there is still enough confusion today as to just what the crime really is. Software pirates call it a victimless crime, praising themselves liberators of knowledge and distributors of ideas and possibilities that would otherwise be impossible for the common man to achieve. Software produces place the blame on pirates like these, that they must charge sixty dollars for that new video game, that new bit of software, to their more loyal and honest customers.

There are several common types of software piracy. These include misusing license limitations by consumers who overinstall applications. They install a single-license application on more than one machine, which is typically against a software license policy. Or they swap programs across a network, allowing any network users to access the software. A more widely known software piracy involves downloading unlicensed software from the Internet and software counterfeiting. Deliberately burning an entire original CD onto multiple copies and distributing them to unlicensed consumers.

The controversy comes down to businesses against all those who use and supply counterfeit software. Software industry claim piracy to be a major problem to the global economy. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) estimates a loss of near thirteen billion dollars in revenue each year because of counterfeiting. That's fifteen percent of the industry's eighty billion dollars in worldwide sales. 37% of the software sold worldwide is estimated to be fake. The United

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