Software Piracy Reasons and Ethical Arguments

With the rapid growth of information technology, getting a hold of software, music, books and movies for free has become a lot easier. Even before the advanced technology and high speed internet, illegal reproduction of these copyrighted materials was carried out with the use disk drives, cassette tapes, and other physical objects. Pirated software is widespread not only to home-users, but also to the corporate world. It poses a serious threat to the industries since copyright laws that had originally been suited for physical texts and tools could no longer be applied to digital works.  The concept of property has changed dramatically into something more abstract, giving rise to the atypical forms of property such as “intellectual property.”  Intellectual property is defined by the WIPO as creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. With the concept of intellectual property came new legislation to protect these works.  Unfortunately, this legislation has been insufficient to prevent widespread piracy in most of the world.  This is because it does little to address the ethical problem associated with it.  To call something “ethical” means to consider it in accordance with accepted principles of right and wrong.  Unfortunately, most people don’t realize the harm in using pirated software.

I stumbled upon a research study entitled INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REASONS BEHIND SOFTWAREPIRACY: AN ANALYSIS OF PREVIOUS STUDIES. In this research study, they concluded that the reasons behind software piracy are the following:

• Social factors at individual level and social structure of the society (individualist vs. collectivist) 

As human beings, our judgment are affected by who we are usually with. If our friends and family use counterfeit software, we would think that it's alright since they're all doing it. Collectivistic countries, which are often developing countries, have higher rates of piracy compared to individualistic countries. Asian countries, like the Philippines, are more law based but the law enforcement is less stringent.

 I agree when Leung (1987) said that "those who come from a culture that defines self as part of the community or in-group are more likely to use the standards of the family or community to define their behaviour. Those who come from a more individualistic society will be more concerned about the consequences of behaviour to one’s needs, interests, and goals." 

• “Risk of penalties” and “moral factors”

The lack of penalties are one of the reasons why people keep using unauthorized software. Individual users believe that they are not prone to high prosecution, unlike the big corporations. The moral beliefs of a person also affects his decision in purchasing/using pirated software; the consumers who are more mindful of the law are less willing to purchase or download pirated software because of its legal implications. However, consumers are less likely to feel accountable for purchasing/downloading pirated products where consumer ethical standards were low. Also, the attitude of an individual towards crime and theft could influence the extent and nature of the acquisition of pirated products. 

• “High software prices” 

Why would you buy a high-priced authentic software if you can get it at a little or no cost? Lower-income consumers basically spend larger amount of money on basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing and thus have a more favourable attitude towards illegally owning/downloading counterfeit materials than the high-income consumers. However, it is not to be assumed that unauthorised downloading of copyrighted materials is limited to lower-income consumers.

• Lack of domestic software industry 

Developed countries have more stringent intellectual property production regulations and enforcement since most of the copyrighted intellectual properties are produced in those countries, thus they receive high benefit from it. Developing countries lack the motivation to enforce such regulations because of the lesser benefit they’ll get.

• “Economic wealth”

The income levels of countries has impact on the general patterns of behaviour of individuals from those countries towards counterfeits; most individuals from low GNP countries cannot afford these high priced softwares and thus use counterfeits instead.

For me, it’s not always about the price tag. There are too much complexities in licensing programs which causes confusion, there’s too much convenience in downloading over the internet or acquiring counterfeits. However, the real question here is, is software piracy ethical?

There are a lot of ethical considerations in every situation making it difficult to determine the ethicality of piracy as a whole.

Consider this actual scenario where a California man, Nathan Peterson, has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison and ordered to pay $5.4 million in restitution for the massive selling of pirated software online. The man pleaded guilty for selling pirated software through his website, iBackups.net, and was charged with 2 counts of copyright infringement for illegally copying and selling more than $20 million in software. The companies affected were Adobe, Macromedia, Symantec, and Autodesk. Most of the buyers were individual consumers, corporations, and a school district. The following are the ethical and social issues/arguments drawn from this scenario:

• Not being able to afford a software is not an excuse for copying it.

However, consider a situation where a visually impaired student needs an expensive magnification software and has no means to pay for it, his school cannot afford the cost either. So he and his parents decide to download an illegal copy of the software from the internet. In this case, they wouldn’t have purchased it to begin with and thus he is not causing any harm to the industry. The person in this case would definitely be pardoned by the society.

•          The size and success of a company do not justify taking from it. Programmers, writers and performing artists lose income when copying is common.

Sympathy is of importance in the software’s industry’s fight against piracy since it determines what is considered ethical or not. If people will keep on believing that these large companies are rich enough already, piracy will continue to be excused.

•          Even though large-scale commercial piracy is worse, individual copying is still not ethical.
The number of people doing it doesn't justify its validity. 

•          People buy pirated software without realizing what they're doing.

Many people may not realize that they’re getting a pirated program, not a bargain, because of the pricing that was just below the manufacturer’s price.

•          Consumers are used to buying products, such as books and CDs that can be shared with friends and family.

•          But if you buy Windows, it doesn't belong to you, it's Microsoft's. They're just letting you use it.

An argument may claim that instead of owning the material itself by purchasing it, you simply have a license to use that material, while the creator of the work maintains ownership of it. But information is not a concrete thing, so how can an individual control it? Information exists in people’s minds and in their property; the original creator cannot possibly have ownership over these. It seems you cannot own information without owning other people.

SOFTWARE PIRACY. Software Pirate gets 7 years in prison itgs.wikispaces.com/file/view/Software+Piracy.ppt