The Problem of Software Piracy

25 Pages 6128 Words

opyright Act." This ties copyright laws already in effect with the emerging digital age. Some inclusions of the treaty are:
ö Limited liability to educational institutions for copyright infringement by faculty or graduate students
ö A balance between the rights of authors and the needs of users
ö An exclusive right to Libraries and Archives to supply up to three copies of a work (instead of one, which is in effect today)
Peter Jaszi of the Digital Future Coalition states, "This legislation is a substantial victory for both the creators and consumers of intellectual property." Basically the DMCA is an equal balance between "restricting software for public use and educational purposes."
Software piracy is not unique; it shares qualities with situations in other industries. Take for instance the music recording industry. It is popular today to trade MP3 encoded music. Controversy has arisen over the last several years as to whether this should be illegal. Much music is copyrighted, so it should be considered illegal to distribu...