Copyright infringement of software

The copyright infringement of software (often referred to as software piracy) refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Copyright infringement of this kind varies globally. Most countries have copyright laws which apply to software, but the degree of enforcement varies.

Subject to many exceptions, it is a copyright violation to download, upload or otherwise distribute copyrighted material through the internet without authorization.

Motivation

Some of the motives for engaging in the illegal activity of copyright infringement are the following:

• Pricing – unwillingness or inability to pay the price requested by the legitimate sellers
• Unavailability – no legitimate sellers providing the product in the country of the end-user: not yet launched there, already withdrawn from sales, never to be sold there, geographical restrictions on online distribution and international shipping
• Usefulness – the legitimate product comes with various means (DRM, region lock, DVD region code, Blu-ray region code) of restricting legitimate use (backups, usage on devices of different vendors, offline usage) or comes with annoying non-skipable advertisements and anti-piracy disclaimers, which are removed in the pirated product making it more desirable for the end-user
• Shopping experience – no legitimate sellers providing the product with the required quality through online distribution and through a shopping system with the required level of user-friendliness

Existing and proposed laws

Main articles: Copyright infringement, History of copyright law, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Protect IP Act, Stop Online Piracy Act, and Software copyright

Demonstration in Sweden in support of software piracy, 2006.

The Pirate Bay logo, a retaliation to the stereotypical image of software piracy

Most countries extend copyright protections to software. Even the oldest legacy computer systems used today will not have their copyright expire until 2030. In the United States, copyright term has been extended many times over from the original term of 14 years with a single renewal allowance of 14 years, to the current term of the life of the author plus 70 years. If the work was produced under corporate authorship it may last 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is less.

Punishment of copyright infringement varies case-by-case across countries. Convictions may include jail time and/or severe fines for each instance of copyright infringement. In the United States, willful copyright infringement carries a maximum penalty of $150,000 per instance.

Proposed laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act broaden the definition of "willful infringement", and introduce felony charges for unauthorized media streaming. These bills are aimed towards defeating websites that carry or contain links to infringing content, but have raised concerns about domestic abuse and internet censorship.

Title I of the US DMCA, the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act has provisions that prevent persons from "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work". Thus if a software manufacturer has some kind of software, dongle or password access device installed in the software any attempt to bypass such a copy protection scheme may be actionable — though the US Copyright Office is currently reviewing anticircumvention rulemaking under DMCA — anticircumvention exemptions that have been in place under the DMCA include those in software designed to filter websites that are generally seen to be inefficient (child safety and public library website filtering software) and the circumvention of copy protection mechanisms that have malfunctioned, have caused the software to become inoperable or which are no longer supported by their manufacturers.

Certain free software licenses, most notably GNU General Public License (GPL) substantially rely on existing copyright law. It is not possible to enforce GPL other than within the framework of existing copyright law.

Limitations

Copyright does not protect the technical form nor R&D of an original work. Copyright contains a Substantial similarity requirement to determine whether the work falls under the Fair use clause.

Evaluation of alleged software copyright infringement in a court of law may be non-trivial; if an original work is alleged to have been modified, then tests such as the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test (AFC Test) are used to detect infringement. The time and costs required to apply this test naturally vary based on the size and complexity of the copyrighted material. Furthermore, there is no standard or universally accepted test; some courts have rejected the AFC Test it in favor of narrower testing criteria.

Impact of copyright infringement

Claims of economic harm

The BSA and IDC claim that losses from software piracy in 2009 have exceeded $51 billion. In addition, it has been claimed that reducing piracy rates would provide significant economical benefits:

Lowering software piracy by just 10 percentage points during the next four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into ailing economies.

— John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC

According to a BSA/IDC studies, the highest piracy rate comes from Armenia, with piracy rate of 93%. China and India are at No. 17 and No. 41 respectively , with 82% and 69% of recorded Software Piracy rates. The lowest piracy rate, according to survey, is observed in USA, at 20%. However, the methodology of these studies has been heavily criticized. According to Techdirt blogger Mike Masnick, estimated losses are exaggerated.

Claims of economic advantage

Within certain research models, it has been shown that under certain circumstances (for example, in growing markets) software copyright holders may see higher profits because of piracy.^{[citation needed]}

Developing countries

Most commercially exploited proprietary software is developed in the United States and Europe.^{[citation needed]} Critics in developing countries see this as an indirect technology transfer tax on their country, preventing technological advancement. This is the leading reason developing countries refuse to accept or respect copyright laws. This idea is often applied to patent laws as well. Traian Băsescu, the president of Romania, stated that "piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania."

The debate about software piracy acceptance in developing countries still continues. In 2011, the Business Software Alliance announced that 83 percent of software deployed on PCs in Africa has been pirated (excluding South Africa).

Anti-copyright infringement organizations

• Business Software Alliance (BSA)
• Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST)
• Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
• Federation Against Software Theft (FAST)
• International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA)

See also

• Abandonware
• Anti-copyright
• Australian copyright law
• Computer Associates Int. Inc. v. Altai Inc.
• Copyleft
• File sharing
• Jacobsen v. Katzer
• Open Letter to Hobbyists
• Product activation
• Software copyright
• Warez
• Windows Genuine Advantage

External links

• Article illustrating the effect of piracy on video games