Privacy and Internet Piracy

The paper will first give a brief introduction of the problem of piracy and internet, and the impact the phenomenon has for corporations, and present a thesis statement for the paper.

The second part will include literature review, and present a background of the problem and a thorough discussion of the problem. The discussion shall include a in-depth look at the issue of piracy, privacy and their significance for the corporations in the internet age. Summary and conclusion will present a clear wrap up of the main ideas of the paper and give a logical ending to it.The paper examines research reports on the impact of the privacy problem on corporations that have their information posted in the internet. It is statistics based analysis of contemporary trends that privacy and piracy has for those corporations.

Internet Corporations on Privacy and Piracy With the escalation of pirate activities the problem of intellectual properties infringement fore corporations and individuals in the world today is very high, and in America in particular the problem is critical.Internet piracy infringes on copyrights of software owners and has negative effects on corporations. Therefore, corporations fight piracy to avoid losses. The internet corporations unfortunately respond to the threat of piracy by adopting measures that infringe the privacy of their loyal customers as they design programs to track down pirates. Hence the internet corporations are faced with a double tragedy; that of pesky pirates and that of disgruntled customers.

Privacy and piracy of intellectual property face a challenge as the technology growth is very rapidly growing.There has been a shift towards what is seen as commoditization of personal information, and an explosion of file sharing programs in the cyberspace. There has been tendency of internet corporations to sacrifice the area of subscribers’ privacy for the sake of gaining total control of the copyright. (Kaytal, 2004) Both circumstances involve the infringement of privacy rights, the first infringement is that of pirates on the corporations privacy and the other is that of the corporation on individual users of their services.

A debate has ranged about the need of protection of private information on the internet. This debate arises from the fact that information and products that people place on the World Wide Web can be easily accessed and pirated by individuals. Among those software corporations worst hit by piracy is Microsoft Corporation. Piracy affects software corporations. It is the unlicensed, non-authorized reproduction, and unlawful distribution of software either for business or personal use. The pirates, in the process of getting the products, violate the corporations’ right to privacy.

They data mine the corporation’s products and go on to appropriate ownership of the products contrary to copyright and intellectual properties laws. The act of piracy has been illegalized in many countries. However this does little to stop the widespread increase of the vice. Piracy causes huge losses for the corporations.

For instance Pirated software is used in nearly 36% of computers around the world, and this cost the industry of software’s $ 29 billion in the year 2003. Nations all over the world experience losses due to piracy as well.The most pirated software materials across the globe belong to Microsoft Corporation (Joyce, 2003). The corporations are the primary losers of revenue due to piracy, the more reason why they are actively pushing for the elimination of the vice. The current availability of internet technology that makes possible the exchange and updating of computer software instantly has aggravated the issue of piracy. The increased use of software has led to the increased demand of software materials.

And due to the infringement on privacy, which is seen in copyright crimes, corporations that deal in software have been experiencing great losses (Porter, 1997). Internet information has been seen as free information by many who involve themselves in piracy activities. The result is that as corporations use the internet to market products like software applications e. g.

windows 97 by Microsoft, books and others they face pirates. The pirated products in the market give a totally imbalanced competition to the original products.This stems from the cheap cost of reproducing copies. In the present several government and private agencies are in the mission of trying to look for protection of the corporations against the intellectual property crimes. Governments are being informed on the detrimental effects of piracy on the economy. Corporations that use software are also being informed of the possible sanctions for using pirated software (Poth, 2000).

All over the world nations have been indifferent to the problem of piracy and the right of people’s privacy protection.The drive to educate the governments is rightly focused because the governments lose substantial amounts of tax money. In 2006, software piracy rates got stronger as losses grew. In a study that was focused on packaged software that is run in computers like operating systems, system software e. g.

databases, and business and consumer applications e. g. computer games. The rate of piracy is estimated to be about 62% and in extreme cases the rate were hitting 75% (CBC news, 2006).

There are several ways of piracy: counterfeiting, retail piracy, over-installation, and online auction and internet piracy.Counterfeiting is reproduction of copyrighted material, and making the copy look the same with the original copy, for purposes of selling. Internet piracy is making downloads of copyrighted material from the web without the permission of the copyright owner. Retail piracy is exemplified by exchanging tapes or DVD’s with friends, buying illegitimate copy of software upgrade. Over-installation occurs when one allows more than paid for stationary computers use the software from the server or in situations where the operator installs a program in more computers than prescribed in the contract agreement.

Online auction is the piracy of selling software materials that are labeled not for resale, or those that aren’t for sale by a third party. Copies of pirated software e. g. movies, and music affect many people. The pirated copies make the newer versions released to be more expensive. The increased expense stems from more funds being put into development of superior technology that is aimed at eliminating piracy in the newer versions.

Another mode of piracy is downloading books for free from the internet.Downloading books has become a routine for many scholars world over. This has become an alternative of buying books from stores. This amounts to no sales made by the copyright owners of the book though their book is obtained by the pirate (Junnarkar 2004).

The theft of piracy poses an economic challenge to nations as it leads to loss of tax money; since pirated materials are not taxed, and also leads to the loss of jobs. Above all it spells doom to software corporations. Another negative result of piracy is loss in retail money.Estimates derived from an analysis on business software applications show that piracy impacts directly and indirectly on receipts, wages, employment, and paid taxes because of pirates flouting taxation requirements (Kahin, 1997). Currently the software industry is a big contributor to economic prosperity in, the United States. It creates about 2million jobs and it pays taxes huge taxes.

The happening piracy is now threatening the industry’s contribution to the economy. Piracy leads to job and wage losses. About ten thousand jobs that is 5% of internet employees in the whole software industry lose their jobs yearly due to piracy.In the sector of retailing software materials there was a loss of about 14% of jobs over the same time frame.

There has been indirect and wage losses occur because for every person directly employed in the software industry there are three who are employed in the economy in general. And where the software industry pays one dollar wage to its employees the software user corporations pay a wage of two dollars (MacRonin, 2007). On the other side of the internet privacy debate is the infringement of internet user’s privacy through technologies developed by the internet companies.Recent decision by (ICANN), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to establish a public database for the display of website owner information such as contact information, name , mailing address, phone number and e mail address whenever one logs into the particular site. Web owners see this as indecent exposure of their contact information since the information can be accessed by people who may spam them or invade their privacy in other ways. The intention of the ICANN is to be able to trace identities of the owners of the websites in cases where the corporations engage in illegal activities.

The common illicit activities include infringement on trademark, cyber squatting, and copyright infringement. Internationally, countries have introduced new schemes that retain data, and increased international data transfers. According to a report by international privacy law society the public is generally opposed to privacy infringing practices by corporations. Another issue of privacy on the internet corporations is that there has been constant infringement of online privacy of children, and privacy of social services networks.

Often children are exploited sexually by older people who gain access to their details from the internet. Sometimes this approach is adopted in dealing with the problem of piracy. Corporations depend on the personal information to guide them to pirates of their materials. Efforts are done to stop the culture of piracy. This is not possible without getting the private details of the web users. For instance, AT & T (an internet service provider) works with Hollywood to develop technology for identifying oversees music and movies pirates (MacRonin, 2007).

In developing technology that can identify individual users of the internet the corporations find themselves infringing on the individuals privacy. With the world wide reach of the internet, the issue of infringement on piracy is used to address world wide issues such as terrorism. This year business leaders, government officials, technical experts and advocates of privacy from all over the world met in France to debate on how to protect privacy in the contemporary setting where there are no information boundaries.Delegates called for increased international unity in the fight against data-mining crimes. In public and private institutions There have been calls by advocates of privacy on the internet i. e.

National Research Council that all U. S. A counterterrorism agencies that have programs for mining personal data as visited websites, phone calls made etc should evaluate their effects on privacy (Poth, 2000). Corporations in the software industry are doing the best they can to curb the increasing piracy.

Many lawsuits have been filed in courts concerning piracy crimes.Microsoft Corporation for instance, accused EDirectSoftware. com for smuggling of discounted software that was meant for educational purpose. The offender was agreed to the offence and agreed on a $ 1 million out of court settlement.

The court handling the case also directed the impoundment and destruction of fifty thousand copiers of pirated software as a part of the settlement (Joyce, 2003). Microsoft gave a detailed report on the negative effect of piracy on other local businesses and economies other than internet service providers themselves.The report which was based on research findings on the state of Georgia stated that the menace of software piracy had to be confronted in order for the region to remain ahead in development and attract innovative companies that offer job opportunities and huge revenues. A look at the issue of piracy reveals a threat to the ability of corporations to make profits. Once the corporations become insolvent and pull out of business there will be great losses for the government as a whole since they contribute lots of tax money.However in order to avoid the implied death, corporations are busy reinventing their products to make them into unmanipulable material.

To achieve this corporation’s should work towards a technological solution that will guarantee the sanctity of the private information of individual customers. But the fight cannot be successful if only one of the players is involved. Fighting the vice requires the combined efforts of consumers, business community and the legal fraternity. One way of dealing with the problem is through ensuring enforcement of copyright laws that are dormant in many countries.Imposition of heavy fines that would deter many a would be pirate is also another way to fight the problem.

In case that this is not done the corporations will find opponents from within and without their industry. That is pirates and customers. The trial by the corporations of sacrificing privacy of individuals as they tried to seek to net pirates is a move that should be abandoned. The approach would lead to individuals refraining from using the services of the service providers.

For instance when peoples information concerning their personal details is made public they feel robbed of a fundamental right.The same applies when consumer information is gathered over the internet and used to establish patterns and trends for sales people; here the customers of a certain website may feel duped of their loyalty. Lastly, based on the wrong information an individual can be arrested for a crime they never committed. If the customers of internet hosts are to pull out due to the apparent infringement of their rights then the stage is set for the corporations to die away. The corporations therefore need to be extremely careful when dealing with the problem of piracy such that they don’t hurt the privacy of their customers.