13Oct Software Piracy

Software piracy is an issue that spans the category boundaries and may be enforced in some organizations and not in others. Pirated computer programs are big business. Copying and selling off-the-shelf application programs in violation of the copyrights costs software vendors many millions of dollars. The problem is an international one, reaching epidemic proportions in some countries. (Software piracy was a major issue in the 1995 Clinton trade agreement with China.) Too many people don’t take copyrights seriously. Law-abiding people everywhere think nothing of copying games to share with friends, or office software for home use.

Bulletin board systems often make pirated software available for downloading or swapping. In a recent case, an MIT student was accused of running a BBS that was used in this way. Charges against him were eventually dropped, however, on the theory that the federal wire fraud statute did not apply to a case involving copyright infringements. Only the copyright statute would apply, and it was not applicable where the infringing person did not intend to profit from his conduct.

The stealing of proprietary programs is also a major business problem. A company may spend millions of dollars to develop a specialized program, only to find that its competitor has the same program–and the competitor hasn’t had to invest in the development costs! The fear that Apple Computer had that the source code for its Macintosh computers may have been compromised. Had this happened, then Macintosh clones could be manufactured anywhere in the world.