Piracy -- good
or bad?
By Yuval
Shavit
Computer piracy means the illegal use of software. It is a serious and very real problem and hurts all that are involved. Many pirates may not even realize that they are harming the developers of the software they steal, yet they are doing that and more. Software pirates hurt not only the software developers but also legitimate consumers and even themselves and it is imperative that they be stopped. This must mainly be done through education and emphasis on morality, since the law is not adequate.
The damage done by pirates to software developers is immense and international. Worldwide, the computer industry lost about $11.2 billion just last year, and $2.7 billion of that comes from the U.S., up from $2.3 billion in 1996. However, they are not the only ones to suffer loss of income. Because the software is not paid for legally, if at all (some software is stolen and sold on the black market), an estimated $1 billion U.S. is lost in taxes. An estimated 130,000 jobs and $5 billion in wages have already been lost to this moral plague and the numbers are predicted to reach 216,000 jobs and $8.8 billion in wages lost by the year 2005. A study published in June 1998 showed that pirating was increasing. In Asia, the amount of money lost to pirates increased by $200,000,000 in just one year, from $3.7 billion in 1996 to $3.9 billion in 1997. In eastern Europe, more than 80% of software acquired during 1997 was pirated, making it the largest pirating region in the world. Just two years earlier, that number was 6% lower. Although some action is being taken to stop pirating, only large companies can be targeted. Especially since the advent of the Internet, pirating has been a growing problem in the home.
Consumers are also hit by pirates. Developing software is expensive. Software engineers are paid well and for a team of one hundred engineers to work for half a year, which is pretty much the minimum an average sized project takes, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries. The company must also compensate for advertising and technical support for users. All of these expenses are redeemed through the income from their products. If a company cannot afford to keep high standards and the costs that come with them, the quality of their product and services can quickly diminish. Technical support is especially hard to maintain, because it is costly and often pirates will call for help, using a friend's registration card and ID, costing the company money without giving it income. Updates and upgrades become harder to create, less profitable and therefore less frequent. The company cannot, of course, simply give up. Instead, it must raise prices to help pay for the damage that pirates have done. "To stay in business," states the Business Software Alliance (BSA), "they [software companies] must pass the cost on to consumers. Honest citizens end up paying higher prices, while thieves take advantage."
Naturally, there are and will always be those who figure that just one more copy will not hurt anybody. These people are mistaken and it is precisely these kinds of mistakes which lead to two out of five copies of software in the workplace being illegal. Also, companies looking to localize software must first research its potential profitability. Localizing is writing a slightly modified version for use in a different language. In deciding whether a certain program ought to be localized, a company must make many calculations. For instance, it could be the case that a company has calculated that 5% of the computer market could use their software. However, in places such as Russia, there is about an 80% pirating rate. This means that only about 1% of the Russian population is likely to buy the software, probably not enough to be profitable. Therefore, countries such as Russia suffer and consumers, whether they be buyers or pirates, feel the sting.
There are two main steps being taken to reduce pirating but they are both quite difficult. The first is to take legal action against offenders. This is practical only on a corporate level and even then many companies can slip through the grasp of the law which mainly relies on anonymous tips. In the past six years, the BSA has collected over $35 million from American companies which have committed piracy. This might seem significant but it is dwarfed in comparison with the $2.7 billion lost in just one year. The law, try as it may, is just not competent to solve the problem. The other solution is education. Socrates said that "the just man has revealed himself to us as good and wise, and the unjust man unlearned and bad". Many pirates do not understand that they are causing malice. Indeed, many do not even understand that what they are doing is wrong, to the extent that most anti-pirate web pages must have a section explaining exactly what pirating is and in what circumstances software is illegal.
The solution lies with the individual. Will he take the easy and cheap, yet inevitably costly, path or will he find the strength to take the virtuous one? The second the difficult choice but is clearly the right one. The future of many innovative and forward-looking companies is in the balance and smaller companies, often those that make the most significant impact, are the ones that bear the brunt of piracy.
Sources:
Shavit, Tani. Personal interview. 11 Jan. 1999.
Autodesk. "Anti-Piracy." 1998: n.pag. 11 Jan. 1999.
Available WWW: http://www.autodesk.com/compinfo/piracy/piracy.htm
.
Software Publishers Association (SPA). "Anti-Piracy Q&A."
1997: n.pag. 11 Jan. 1999.
Available WWW: http://www.spa.org/piracy/q&a.htm .
SPA. "1997 Global Piracy Estimates Press Release." 16 June 1998:
n.pag. 11 Jan. 1999.
Available WWW: http://www.spa.org/piracy/releases/97pir.htm .
Business Software Alliance. "BSA Anti-Piracy Site -- Software Piracy." 1998: n.pag.11 Jan. 1999. Available WWW: http://www.nopiracy.com/ .
Plato. The Republic. Trans. Allan Bloom. USA: Basic Books, 1968.
-Yuval Shavit
The defining characteristic of a great man is one who doesn't sneeze
The way I see it is that in most cases, it's students or not-so-well-off people that pirate software. I mean, 1,000$ for QuarkXpress is a bit steep. You may argue that only professionals need it, but the view of many people who pirate software is that they wouldn't have bought it in the first place, so it is not a lost sale. If more companies produced academic pricing schemes and cut-down home or personal editions of software that are within home users' and students' budgets, then they could stamp out a lot of piracy. Piracy will never die (everybody commits "copyright theft", even if it's only copying their favourite CD to tape), so I think it's mainly a case of reducing it.
-- Finlay Dobbie