Software Piracy 13809

Software Piracy What is Software Piracy The PC industry is just over 20 years old. In those 20 years, both the quality and quantity of available software programs have increased dramatically. Although approximately 70% of the worldwide market is today supplied by developers in the United States, significant development work is occurring in scores of nations around the world. But in both the United States and abroad, unauthorized copying of personal computer software is a serious problem.

On average, for every authorized copy of personal computer software in use, at least one unauthorized copy is made. Unauthorized copying is known as software piracy, and in 1994 it cost the software industry in excess of US$15 billion. Piracy is widely practiced and widely tolerated. In some countries, legal protection for software is nonexistent (i.e., Kuwait); in others, laws are unclear (i.

e. Israel), or not enforced with sufficient commitment (i.e., the PRC).

Significant piracy losses are suffered in virtually every region of the world. In some areas (i.e., Indonesia), the rate of unauthorized copies is believed to be in excess of 99%. Why do People Use Pirated Software? A major reason for the use of pirated software is the prices of the REAL thing.

Just walk into a CompUSA, Electronics Boutique, Computer City, Egghead, etc and you will notice the expensive price tags on copies of the most commonly used programs and the hottest games. Take the recent Midwest Micro holiday catalogue for example and notice the prices. Microsoft Windows 95: $94, Microsoft Office 95: $224, Microsoft Visual C++: $250, Borland C++: $213, Corel Draw 7: $229, Corel Office Professional 7: $190, Lotus Smartsuite 96: $150, Microsoft Flight Simulator95: $50, Warcraft 2: $30. The list goes on and on and the prices for the programs listed above were only upgrade versions. Users of the software listed above include anywhere from large companies like AT&T to yourself, the average user at home. Although a $30 game like Warcraft 2 doesn't seem like much, by the time you finish reading this paper, it will seem like a fortune.

Ease of Availability Since the law states clearly that making a copy of what you own and distributing it or installing more than one copy of one piece of software on two separate computers is illegal, then why do the average Joes like you and us still do it? There are many answers to that question and all of them seem legitimate except that no answers can be legally justified. A friend borrowing another friend's Corel draw or Windows 95 to install on their own PC is so common that the issue of piracy probably doesn't even come to mind right away or even at all. Pirated Software on the Internet The Internet is sometimes referred to as a "Pirate's Heaven." Pirated software is available all over the net if you bother to look for them. Just go to any of the popular search engines like Excite, Infoseek or Yahoo and type in the common phrase "warez, appz, gamez, hacks" and thousands of search results will come up.

Although many of the links on the pages will be broken because the people have either moved the page or had the page shut down, some of the links will work and that one link usually has a decent amount of stuff for you to leech off of or a better way to put it is for you to download. Web Sites That we Have Personally Visited: Jelle's Warez Collection Wazh's Warez Page Beg's Warez Page Chovy's Empire The Spawning Grounds GAMEZ Lmax's Warez Page Jugg's Warez-List Jureweb Warez Page Top Warez Page Why Are They There? Why is there pirated software on the net? There could only be two possible answers. Either the people who upload these files are very nice people or they do it just because its illegal and browsers of the web like us wouldn't mind taking our time to visit these sites to download the software. What they get out of it is the thousands of "hits" their sites get a day which makes them very happy.

Anonymous and Account-Based FTP Sites FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP sites are around so that people can exchange software with each other and companies like Microsoft can distribute info and demos to users who visit their FTP site. Something they don't want happening is the distribution of their full-release products on "Pirate" FTP sites. "Pirate" FTP sites come and go.

Most sites don't stay up for more than a day or two. They are also referred to as 0 day FTP sites. Its extremely difficult to logon to these sites becasuse they are usually full of leechers like us or require a username and password. FTP Sites That we Have Visited: ftp://ftp.epri.com ftp://ftp.

dcs.gla.ac.uk ftp://204.

177.0.18 ftp://207.48.187.133 ftp://192.

88.237.2 ftp://153.104.11.

94 ftp://208.137.11.105 ftp://194.

85.157.2 Newsgroups There are over 20,000 newsgroups on the net. The majority of them are nonsense but if you happen to stumble upon the right one, you'll be able to get almost any crackor serial number for any game or program. Although programs and games are not abundant on newsgroups, you'll be able to obtain registered programs of such popular shareware like Winzip and Mirc and if you post trade requests, people will respond to your request.

Newsgroups With Cracks, Serial #'s, Programs and Games News:alt.binaries.cracks News:alt.binaries.games News:alt.crackers News:alt.

cracks News:alt.hacker News:alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc News:alt.

binaries.warez.ibm-pc.games News:alt.warez.

ibm-pc Exchanging Through E-Mail It is illegal to send copyrighted programs and games through e-mail but does anyone really care? Everyday, there are hundreds and thousands of illegally attached programs and games sent through the net in the form of e-mail. Just visit any of the above newsgroups and you'll see listings of people who want to trade through e-mail. We placed an ad in news:alt.binaries.cracks requesting three programs: Magnaram 97, Qemm8.

0 and Corel Draw 7. We managed to receive both Magnaram 97 and Qemm 8.0 through e-mail from some nice person but did not receive Corel Draw 7 most likely because it was not a reasonable demand. Modem Speeds Part of the reason nobody sent us Corel Draw 7 is because of the size of the program and the many hours it takes to upload and download it. The two most common modem speeds at the time that this report was written are 28.8kbps and 14.

4kbps. Both speeds are considered to be extremely slow when it comes to transferring enormous amounts of data. Most of the programs and games nowadays are on CD-Roms which if full, contain 650MB of data. The new X2 Technology, Cable modems, ISDN modems and DirecPC satellite dishes could solve the long download time problems a little better considering that all the above mentioned modems are two to fourteen times faster in transferring data than the 28.

8kbps modems. Cost of Pirated Software To The Industry Piracy cost companies that produce computer software $13.1 billion in lost revenue during 1995. The loss exceeded more than the combined revenues of the 10 largest personal computer software companies. The dollar loss estimates were up from the $12.

2 billion in 1994 because of the spreading use of computers worldwide. Microsoft (The Big Loser) MS Windows 95 $179 MS Office Pro 95 $535 MS Project 95 $419 MS Publisher 97 $69 MS Visual C++ 4.0 $448 These are the prices they expect people to buy their software at. In Hong Kong, copies of these lucrative pieces software can be had for about five US dollars for all of them on one CD very easily. That will be further explained later.

The Honest Consumer Software piracy harms all software companies and, ultimately, the end user. Piracy results in higher prices for honest users, reduced levels of support and delays in funding and development of new products, causing the overall breadth and quality of software to suffer. US Laws In 1964, the United States Copyright Office began to register software as a form of literary expression. The Copyright Act, Title 17 of the U.S.

Code, was amended in 1980 to explicitly include computer programs. Today, according to the Copyright Act, it is illegal to make or distribute copyrighted material without authorization. The only exceptions are the user's right to make a copy as an "essential step" in using the program (for example, by copying the program into RAM) and to make a single backup copy for archival purposes (Title 17, Section 117). No other copies may be made without specific authorization from the copyright owner. In December 1990, the U.S.

Congress approved the Software Rental Amendments Act, which generally prohibits the rental, leasing or lending of software without the express written permission of the copyright holder. This amendment followed the lead of the British Parliament (which passed a similar law, The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, in 1988), and adds significant additional protection against unauthorized copying of personal computer software. In addition, the copyright holder may grant additional rights at the time the personal computer software is acquired. For example, many applications are sold in LAN (local area network) versions that allow a software package to be placed on a LAN for access by multiple users. Additionally, permission is given under special license agreement to make multiple copies for use throughout a large organization.

But unless these rights are specifically granted, U.S. law prohibits a user from making duplicate copies of software except to ensure one working copy and one archival copy. Without authorization from the copyright owner, Title 18 of U.S. Code prohibits duplicating software for profit, making multiple copies for use by different users within an organization, downloading multiple copies from a network, or giving an unauthorized copy to another individual.

All are illegal and a federal crime. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and jail terms up to five years (Title 18, Section 2320 and 2322). Business Software Alliance (BSA) The Business Software Alliance (BSA) promotes the continued growth of the software industry through its international public policy, enforcement, and education programs in 65 countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Founded in 1988, BSA's mission is to advance free and open world trade for legitimate business software by advocating strong intellectual property protection for software.

BSA's worldwide members include the leading publishers of software for personal computers such as Adobe Systems, Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Autodesk, Inc., Bentley Systems, Inc., Lotus Development Corp., Microsoft Corp.

, Novell, Inc., Symantec Corp., and The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. BSA's Policy Council consists of these publishers and other leading computer technology companies including Apple Computer Inc., Computer Associates International, Inc.

, Digital Equipment Corp., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., and Sybase, Inc.

Statistics of Software Piracy. Court Cases Inslaw vs. Dept. of Justice -Sued Justice Dept for Software piracy. -In 1982, Inslaw landed a $10M contract with the Justice Dept. to install PROMIS case-tracking software in 20 offices.

-They allegedly spent $8M enhancing PROMIS on the assumption that they could renogotiate the contract to recoup the expenses. -But after the Justice Dept. got the source code, they terminated the contract pirated the code -By 1985, Inslaw was forced into bankruptcy. -Owners kept fighting and the case ended up in the US Bankruptcy Court -In Feb. '88, Inslaw was awarded $6.

8M in damages plus legal fees Novell and Microsoft Settle Largest BBS Piracy Case Ever -Scott W. Morris, operator of the Assassin's Guild BBS, agreed to pay Microsoft and Novell $73,00 in cash and forfeit computer hardware valued at More than $40,000 -In the raid, marshals seized 13 computers, 11 modems, a satellite dish, 9 gigs of online data, and over 40 gigs of off-line data Novell Files Software Piracy Suits Against 17 Companies in California -The suits allege that the defendants were fraudulently obtaining Novell upgrades and/or counterfeiting NetWare boxes to give the appearance of a a new product -The suit follows Novell's discovery that the upgrade product was being sold in Indonesia, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, as well as the US F.B.I. Reveals Arrest in Major CD-Rom Piracy Case -The first major case of CD-Rom piracy in the United States -A Canadian father and son were found in possession of 15,000 counterfeit copies of Rebel Assault and Myst that were being sold at 25% of the retail value -Both men were free on bail Pirated Software in Asia and the Rest of the World Pirate Plants in China The Chinese government says there are 34 factories in China producing compact discs and laser discs. Authorities say most have legitimate licenses to produce legal CDs.

But production capacity far outstrips domestic demand. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of film, music, computer software and publishing businesses, China produces an estimated 100 million pirated CDs a year, while its domestic market is only 5 million to 7 million CDs annually.

Where is the oversupply going? To Hong Kong, and then overseas. Another major problem is that Chinese officials and soldiers have money invested to these factories so no matter how hard the US pushes China to close down these factories, the Chinese government will have a laid back approach. Software piracy in Asia is connected to organized crime. Vendors in Hong Kong The Golden Shopping Arcade in Hong Kong's Sham Shui Po district is a software pirate's dream and software companies nightmare.

Here you can buy Cd's called Installer discs for about nine dollars US. All volumes of these installers contain 50+ programs each compressed with a self-extracting utility. Volume 2 has a beta copy of Windows 95 as well as OS/2 Warp, CorelDraw! 5, Quicken 4.0, Atari Action Pack for Windows, Norton Commander, KeyCad, Adobe Premier, Microsoft Office, and dozens of other applications, including a handful written in Chinese.

The programs on this disc cost around $20,00-$35,000 US retail. It is very common for a store to be closed for a portion of the day and then reopen later because of raids from authorities. These stores as you can expect are extremely crowded with kids and tourists. US Tourists A good number of Americans who travel to Hong Kong or another part of Asia will bring home pirated software of some sort because of the very low prices for expensive pieces of software here in the US. The usual way to do it is to stuff the cd's in clothes and hand carried luggage. Another approach is sending them back to the US using the postal service.

Both of these methods work very well. We have had relatives who have done this for us and the success rate thus far is 100%. The United States Customs Service has been trained in the apprehension of software pirates at ports of entry but this is a joke because they are more worried about illegal immigrants and terrorists rather than software pirates.