Can Digital Piracy Be Stopped

In today's society, technological advancements are being accomplished at a much faster rate than software companies can safeguard from computer piracy. There's a big conflict between legitimate business's and illegal distributors, which is creating a black-market. Essentially, piracy is illegal distribution and use of any product protected by copyright laws. Piracy effects society in various ways. Our paper discusses the laws and ethics, business losses, known cases, and the means used to commit piracy. There are many laws concerning software piracy that have been around for years but have proven to be fairly useless. Now we see an increased interest in the transmission of illegal software and some new laws have come about, to protect companies from piracy that are still in the making. Although the laws are in affect people know that reproducing software without authorization is the easiest and cheapest way to get the most recent software. These new laws will bestow harsher penalties to those who chose to ignore them in hopes to solve or diminish the problem of software piracy.

The most common law broken in the piracy world is the Copyright Act of 1976. This act "protects a person's right to control the reproduction and distribution of his or her creative works like books, songs and movies."(Software Piracy and U.S. Law, p.1). Although this act came about for written works it was applied to the Internet and everything posted on it, if it has a copyright it is covered. "Violations of copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and the terms of license agreements is prohibited by law..."(Kling, p.882) Every original expression is eligible for copyright protection as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form.

Another law that helps against piracy is The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This act which was passed in the late 1998 is another way the government is trying to prevent piracy in the software business. Included in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are these key factors:

* Reasserts copyright in cyberspace.

* Makes illegal most attempts to defeat anti-copying technology.

* Lets companies and common citizens circumvent anti-copying technology when necessary to make software or hardware compatible with other products. To conduct encryption research, or to keep personal information from being spread by Internet cookies or other copy-protected tools.

* Forbids excessive copying of databases, even when those databases contain information already in the public domain.

There are other actions besides the enforcement of these laws that companies can take in order to protect themselves from piracy. Organizations such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) also work to help protect intellectual property rights. The Business Software Alliance protects many of the world's leading software developers including Compaq, Corel Corporation, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and more. Since 1988 the BSA has been attempting to inform computer users about software copyrights, develop innovation and increase trade opportunities, and finally they contribute in the fight against software piracy. The SIIA protects companies that produce and sell software and electronic information for business, education, consumers, and the Internet. Piracy on the Internet puts forth two critical issues. The first of course being lost sales, the second being the decline in industry jobs. If the pirated software were to be purchased legally the industry would be able to provide jobs to 32,700 more people, which is a significant amount. If this piracy continues in the same fashion for the next 8 years there will be a total loss of about 52,700 jobs in