Piracy :: essays research papers

PiracyRecently, The Toronto Star published an article entitled "RCMP seizes BBS,piracy charges pending." The RCMP have possessed all computing machine componentsbelonging to the "90 North" bulletin board system in Montreal, Quebec. Theboard is acc commitd of allowing people the opportunity to download (get) commercialand beta (or commercial) package versions. I feel that the RCMP should noncharge people that are linked to computer piracy, because the pirated software programoffers valuable opportunity to programmers and users. Also, revenue lost to thelarge software companies is such a nonaged amount that the effect wont be greatlyfelt by them and so it is not worth the policing effort required to cover up downthe pirates.When pirates distribute the illegal software, one could say that they arehelping, than hurting the software companies. By distributing the softwareworld wide, it creates great advertisement for the software companies and theirproducts. Althou gh the software company is losing profits from that particularversion, it could generate future sales with other versions. Also, when thepirates distribute the software this could be a great source of test data forthe software companies. This is an effective way to catch any unfounded bugs inthe software program. From debugging to hacking, hackers can benefit the most.They can study and learn from the advancements with in the programming.So what does all this activity tell us? This tells us the people arewilling to go to great lengths to get software at a displace cost, or possibly inexchange for other software and that they are succeeding in their efforts.Although more than 50% of their software income is from other companies which donot pirate, this poses a problem for the software industries. By fining asingle bulletin board out of the thousands in North America, there would belittle accomplished. non to mention the fact the it is extremely difficult toprove and convict people under the Copyright Act. In todays society, revenuefrom software is such a small income source for corporations such as WordPerfectCorp. These companies make their money mainly from individuals purchasing extramanuals, reference material, supplementary hardware, and calling product support.Software companies are assured of the pirate world and the changes they havemade. Some companies actually want you to take the software by using theSHAREWARE concept. In SHAREWARE one gets a chance to use demo programs and thenpay for the full purchase if he feels it is worthwhile. It is a bit like testdriving a car, before one buys. In most cases, users are happy and end up