Savraj+Lota

__**SOFTWARE PIRACY**__ Copyright is a form of an intellectual property that protects creative work such as, songs, books, software etc. The Canadian copyright act provides all rights to owners of original material, may be it any form. Infringement of this act is considered as violating the law, and can be punitive for any infringers. This law encourages people to produce innovative work and at the same time keeping all the profits generated for themselves. The copyright act grants certain rights to the copyright owner such as: right to reproduce, right to prepare derivatives and the right to distribute. However, when these rights are violated the economy is affected negatively resulting in lost revenues leading to lower tax collections which may further lead to a lower employment rate. In this paper we will discuss software piracy and the theory why people infringe the law. The theory described below is used to determine why people tend to choose copyright software over original software. The parameters for software piracy are based on “Routine Activities Theory”, which is developed in late 1970s in order to distinguish between criminal inclinations and criminal events (Holsapple, 2008). This theory is comprised of three different parts such as Target, Guardian, and Likely Offender. All these parts are further divided into subparts and a brief explanation related to each subpart is described below in order to attain better understanding regarding the criteria involved in detecting software piracy. The target is encompassed of four distinct characteristics: Value, Inertia, Visibility and Access. All these characteristics are described in thorough detail as follows: Value: The value (price) of software plays an important role in determining whether the software targeted to pirate is worth taking the risk. Secondly, inertia is defined as the measure of the size of the software file. For instance: - the data stored onto the CDs’ can easily be copied (CD burning) since the size of the copied file is less than 1GB and takes little less than half a minute to transmit the files. On the other hand, visibility is basically directly related to popularity of a product or a newly launched product. In other words, the visibility of a product increases during the new release of a movie or music so that the hacker or violator can target these new applications and sell it for a profit by illegal means. Lastly, the accessibility of a product can be defined as the level of difficulty required in getting the software. Less difficulty means that the product is highly accessible such as software available over the internet and the higher difficulty level means getting the illegal version of software through buying or selling. The Second parameter “Guardian” involves guarding the software from unauthorized uses and involves the following features. Legal Solutions: It involves the formulization of rules and regulations relating to protecting the software from getting misused and prosecuting people for unauthorized use of software. On the other hand, technological Solutions are used in protecting the authenticity of software by taking steps in order to control piracy. One of the steps involves “Digital Rights Management technology and copy protection algorithms built into digital content” (Holsapple, 2008) in order to reduce the occurrence of copying. Other safeguarding measure involves having one serial number or product key for each software sold by the manufacturers or retailers. Third Parameter “Motivated Offender” involves formal and informal sanctions, which relate to prosecution of the offender if he/she gets caught in the act of software piracy. Other sub-parameters involve “Perceived benefits of noncompliance”, which are stated as “benefits other than the financial and economic benefits of owning pirated software”. (Holsapple, 2008).

The right to reproduce is the most important law under in the copyright act, as it grants no one other than the owner the right to make copies of the software that has been originally developed. Violation of this right causes many negative effects to the economy as it results to lost revenues and also forces companies to work with piracy agencies to control copyright. The right to prepare derivative works based upon the works created. This usually involves amendments to any previous versions of software or creating a new one based on someone else’s work. “a work based upon one or more pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.” (Britlaw, 2009). The right to distribute, grants the holder rights to make the software available to the public by sale, rental, leasing or lending when they so choose to. This right also helps in preventing unauthorized distribution of the software and also controls first hand distribution, which is controlling whether the retailer may distribute the product ahead. However, “the distribution right is limited by the "first sale doctrine", which states that after the first sale or distribution of a copy, the copyright holder can no longer control what happens to that copy.” (Britlaw, 2009). To conclude, even when the copyright holder holds the rights of production and distribution business and consumers still violate the law based on the theory described above in order to obtain and create a large market share. In other words, there is no way to collect taxes on stolen or illegal software, which ultimately hurts the economy and leads to less job creation in Information Technology (IT) sector thus, resulting to a disadvantage to the economy.

** Works Cited ** Weir, Jan D., and Shane A. Ellis. __Critical Concepts of Canadian Business Law__. Third ed. New York: Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated, 2003. Page 497 Daniel A. Tysver. "Rights granted under copyright law." __www.britlaw.com__. 28 Jan. 2009 . "Software piracy." __www.techweb.com__. 28 Jan. 2009 . __ www.informationweek.com __. 28 Jan. 2009 . Holsapple, Clyde W., Iyengar, Deepak, Jin, Haihao and Rao, Shashank(2008) “Parameters for Software Piracy Research”,The Information Society,24:4,199 — 218.