Copying Software

Intellectual property theft harms authors

A study commissioned by Microsoft found pirated software saves its users in developing countries more than $2.9 billion annually. In other words, pirated software is costing Microsoft more than $2.9 billion per year in sales. This includes Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific. In fact, 90% of Microsoft users in China (sometimes referred to as a "one-disk" country) use pirated software (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/111711-pirated-software-253255.html).

Some may ask, what's the big deal? Everyone does it, don't they? And wouldn't you rather not pay the big software companies? Do you think they'd miss just one purchase? Unfortunately, if many people make that "one purchase," it adds up.

Similar what goes on with BitTorrent with music downloads, unauthorized copying and downloading copyrighted software is illegal. It's known as intellectual property theft and happens with music, movies, software, and books.

If you've been an author - be it of software, music, books, and so on - you know there's many hours and hard work involved to produce your product. You may or may not get paid huge royalties for what you've created, but it should be your choice whether to share it free of charge. Pirating takes that choice from the author.

Don't think it really makes a difference? Protecting intellectual property is about paying people to be creative and giving them jobs to do so. Look at what's happened to the music industry since Napster started illegal file-sharing over a decade ago. In the U.S., the cumulative loses are about $75 billion, with sales less than half of what they were before file-sharing began. It adds up.

Of course, there is the entire open software movement. And you've probably heard all the arguments on both sides as to if that's a good thing or not. But there is GNU General Public Licensed software if you don't want to pay for software. Those authors are fine with downloads. However, for those organizations and authors that haven't made their software available for free downloads, its illegal to be downloading or copying that software.

• Microsoft
• Corporate Issues
• intellectual property
• intellectual property rights
• pirated software