Crime That Pays (and Pretty Well, Too)

Question 1 What is the relationship among governments, institutions, organizations, and companies in developing legal codes to fight software piracy? Answer: Software technology was facing problem of digital piracy. Software piracy is the illegal distribution and copying of software for personal and business use. In USA software is automatically protected by federal copyright law from the moment of its creation. US copyright act grants the copyright owner the exclusive right to protect the copyrighted work and to distribute the copies of it. According to US federal law copyright infringement is illegal and punishable. But worldwide software piracy is very high and the penalty is very less for it. Software maker, organization, companies have to bare billions of dollars losses every year. Governments, institutions, organization, and companies are interest in persuing solution to the piracy problem and for this they develop legal codes to fight software industry association BSA (Business Software Alliance). The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) and the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) made efforts to spur government to toughen laws. BSA maintains ______ more than 80 countries and each nation unit works to promote legal online world by negotiating with governments and consumers in the international software and internet markets. Its working to educate consumers on software management and copyright protection, cyber security, e-commerce and other internet related issues. BSA members include companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Dell, IBM, Intel and Apple computer. Software makers, government and associations, acting both singly and jointly, have successfully lobbied transnational industries to help police piracy. In the early 2000 for __________ the 184 members nation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) pledged to protect intellectual property worldwide by developing IPR treaties.

WIPO the lobbied members to ratify an array of anti-piracy treaties namely the World Copyright Treaty) and the WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). The World Trade Organization (WTO) enacted an agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which is designed to regulate enforcement of copyright and counterfeiting violations. Hoping collective political arrangements and legal actions by companies, associations, governments and institutions would lead to a decline in global software piracy. Question 3 Can the software industry expect to control software piracy without relying on government? Why would the software industry dislike greater government regulation? Answer: Yes, the software industries do have the ability to control software piracy without relying on government. As we can see from the case that, companies like Adobe and Symentec took initiative to create awareness to public about the illegal copying of softwares. The other companies such as Microsoft also took initiative to control software piracy. They hired former federal and police investigator, stages software strings, relayed information to prosecutors and took legal action against thousands of technologically illicit websites. Use of holograms and registration codes assisted the companies to authenticate the softwares. Other companies used internet search engines to sneak websites that distributed and sold pirated software. The software industries might not like the government regulations in the software business. As for example, in the United States, government introduced number of initiatives. FBI and Custom services, conducted raid worldwide against so-called warez groups who reproduces, modified and distributed pirated software over the internet. It is nevertheless a good initiative. On the other hand the Senate approved the Tradde Promotion Authority which gave president more power to technology related trade agreement. Now the software companies will have less power with them as government will be in charge for negotiation. This surely can slow down the technological development.

Question 4 How do you think consumers in high-theft countries justify software piracy? Similarly, what ideas or conditions lead consumers in low-theft countries to respect IPRs? Answer: Consumers in high-theft countries do not understand the differences between the pirated and the original software. Moreover, they are in support of software piracy. They think that any property as being common to all and existing for the benefit of all. They do not understand the consequences that might occur due to the usage of the pirated software. They do not understand the concept of intellectual property rights. All the high-theft countries are mainly the developing countries. The income of any individual in a developing country is not even close to that of a developed country. They will always go for the products which are cheaper than any other. Normally the genuine copies of the softwares are far more expensive than the pirated copy of the same software. Therefore they will go for acquiring the software that is cheap to them. They also believe that software makers should allow informational and technical wealth to be openly shared with customers. They also think that piracy is the most effective way of dealing with Western monopolists who charge exorbitant prices for the necessary tools of economic development. On the other hand, people in the low-theft countries well understand the concept of the intellectual property rights. They understand that there is a reason behind the copyright act. Another thing is that, the political and the legal system of the low-theft countries are far stronger than that of in a high-theft country.