Piracy of Technology Essay -- Computers Electronics Papers

Piracy of Technology The topic that I chose for my website and thesis project is piracy of software, music, and video from the Internet and other digital sources. With technology growing at faster rates than ever, this has become a very large problem practically overnight. Even though software and video piracy has become a huge problem, music copyright infringement has by far overshadowed these two. You can find a new article in the news about it almost every day and every one has an opinion including me. And I will be more than happy to share mine later. I will begin by discussing software piracy. This crime has been around for a long time. Unlike the others, it has been a problem ever since the advent of computers. It also comes in many shapes and sizes. It is also very easy to copy and the duplicate is usually as good as the original. From the day that a piece of software is created, federal copyright laws automatically protect it. The only way that a consumer can copy a piece of copyrighted software is to copy it onto a single computer or to make another copy for archival purpose only (Computer 2). It is very illegal to copy and sell copyrighted software, and there can be very heavy fines if a violator gets caught. It is considered a federal crime and comes with punishments of up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine (Computer 2). There are many types of software piracy including soft loading, which is the purchase of a single user software license that is then loaded onto many computers (Computer 1). This occurs in the office most frequently. Counterfeiting is making and selling fake copies of real software. People also rent software to consumers when they do not have permission from th... ...stm. â€Å"Computer Software Piracy†. 26 March 2003. http://bbb.org/library/pastip.asp. â€Å"How to Stop Online Music Piracy† 9 April 2003. http://www.pan.com/piracy/. â€Å"MacOpinion: In Defense of Piracy† 9 April 2003. http://www.macopinion.com/columns/curmudgeon/99/01/28.html. â€Å"Music Piracy and the Home Audio Recording Act† 9 April 2003. http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2002dltr0023.html. â€Å"Music Piracy Report 2002† 26 March 2003. http://www.ifpi.org/site- content/antipiracy/piracy2002.html. â€Å"Music Piracy Can Be Controlled† 9 April 2003. http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,16895,00.asp. â€Å"Software Piracy and the Definition of Shareware† 9 April 2003. http://www.notepager.net/piracy.htm. â€Å"Kazaa Taunts Record Biz: Catch Us† 9 April 2003. http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,55356,00.html.