The Problem of Software Piracy

25 Pages 6128 Words

CHAPTER #1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE FACTS ABOUT SOFTWARE PIRACY
Software Piracy is and will continue to be an enormous economical problem for software producers. According to the Business Software Alliance, in 1998, 38% of software in the United States was pirated. This created a loss of around $11 billion and over 100,000 jobs (see Fig 1). This is an obvious problem locally, but an even greater problem is international piracy where in some countries 95% of software is counterfeit. The primary dilemma in many countries is that there are no legal standards for copyright enforcement.
The Facts on Software Piracy Software piracy cost US businesses $4.5 million in fines and legal fees in 1998 In the US alone, software piracy cost 109,000 jobs in 1998 By 2008, piracy is expected to cost an additional 175,700 jobs. (Fig. 1). BSA Anti-Piracy Fact sheet.
The United States has several state laws regarding software piracy. The "Intellectual Property Rights Initiative" is a stated proposal by the government to act on all forms of piracy. The U.S. Trade Representative and the Patent and Trademark Office are negotiating treaties with other countries to enforce anti-piracy legislation. In 1997 congress passed the "Net Electronic Theft Act" (NET). This allows authorities to "prosecute people who copy and distribute software over the Internet even if they don't make a profit." The NET also included a clause about software trading. This seems like an excellent standard to set, but lack of enforcement by the Department of Justice has caused this act to be ineffective.
Dwindling success of local enforcement of piracy law has sparked new enthusiasm for international lawmaking. The "WIPO Treaties" were created to bring international copyrights together to fight piracy. These treaties will hopefully send a message to the world that "the U.S. will not tolerate piracy." The core act involved in these operations is the "Digital Millennium C...