The Consequences Of Software Piracy

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Many people these days are guilty of being “software pirates”. “Software piracy is the unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted software. This can be done by copying, downloading, sharing, selling, or installing multiple copies onto personal or work computers.” (Business Software Alliance) They justify their actions by claiming they are stealing from the huge corporate company’s that are out there making money off of us and do not care about their customers. This way of thinking overlooks the real fact those very actions are the ones hurting customers and those who follow the rules.
The process of software piracy is simple, one would usually purchase a single license copy to use a company’s product on a computer. That being said, it is not just purchasing the software itself, which tends to make some people not realize that some of their actions could be a form of software piracy. Software piracy in its entirety is unethical and more so, illegal. Even though it is illegal, there are still millions of people throughout the world that are guilty of being software pirates. Not only does this affect the company that is having their software stolen from them, but it affects other companies, as well as, the loyal customers who actually purchase their products as the publisher intended. The only way to fight against this issue is to make it more appealing for end users to actually want to purchase the software legitimately. There are four main types of software piracy that should be investigated more in depth to really understand why and how this is happening. The first form of piracy is considered ‘End User Piracy’. The Microsoft definition for end user piracy is: “End-user copying is a common type of piracy. It happens when individuals and businesses make copies of software without a license to do so. People may copy a program and give it to their friends without realizing that this is software piracy. Sometimes an organization will install software on more computers than its licenses allow.” (Khadka) Looking at this definition, it may be brought to light that this happening around the world fairly often. A lot of businesses are especially guilty of installing more copies of a licensed piece of software on work computers than the number that was originally intended. This is what really does not make, as most companies should want to maintain their integrity in their dealings within the work place. Being caught for doing something like this could lead to huge financial costs as well as even tarnishing their name to the public eye. The next form of piracy called counterfeiting. “Counterfeiting means duplicating and distributing imitation software on a large scale. This is a sophisticated activity and has
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However, it is also a huge source for illegal activities such as software piracy. Everyday there are websites and hosts that are being shut down due to having illegal copies of software available from them for downloading. Something else to be taken into account is: the rate at which the internet continues to grow. This being said, it allows for people to quickly get their hands on something in a matter of minutes. Back when the internet was a lot slower, people were less likely to download illegal copies of software being the fact that the file sixes are humongous and would have taken forever to download on dial up rather than five to 10 minutes on DSL, as stated on the Adobe website ‘Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection’ file size 7 Gigabytes (GB). Potential pirates would have rather just gone out and purchased a legit copy they knew would work and was backed up by the company’s legitimacy. Now with the speed increase, people can download cracked and hacked copies of software, and should one source not work, they can access plenty more until they find a working copy.
The last form of software piracy to be looked at is hard disk loading. “This happens when builders of computer systems sell PCs with unlicensed software pre-installed. These dealers use one copy of a software program but install it illegally on many machines. The original disks and the documents that should come with the PC are often missing or incomplete. If they are supplied, they frequently turn out to be counterfeit.” (Business Software

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