Essay About General Knowledge And Software Licensing

Software Licensing and Piracy
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Software Licensing And Piracy
Author: Kelly Sommerfeld
Email: [email protected]
In 1993 worldwide illegal copying of domestic and
international software cost $12.5 billion to the software industry,
with a loss of $2.2 billion in the United States alone. Estimates show
that over 40 percent of U.S. software company revenues are generated
overseas, yet nearly 85 percent of the software industrys piracy
losses occurred outside of the United States borders. The Software
Publishers Association indicated that approximately 35 percent of the
business software in the United States was obtained illegally, which
30 percent of the piracy occurs in corporate settings. In a corporate
setting or business, every computer must have its own set of original
software and the appropriate number of manuals. It is illegal for a
corporation or business to purchase a single set of original software
and then load that software onto more than one computer, or lend, copy
or distribute software for any reason without the prior written
consent of the software manufacturer. Many software managers are
concerned with the legal compliance, along with asset management and
costs at their organizations. Many firms involve their legal
departments and human resources in regards to software distribution
and licensing.
Information can qualify to be property in two ways; patent law
and copyright laws which are creations of federal statutes, pursuant
to Constitutional grant of legislative authority. In order for the
government to prosecute the unauthorized copying of computerized
information as theft, it must first rely on other theories of
information-as-property. Trade secret laws are created by state law,
and most jurisdictions have laws that criminalize the violations of a
trade-secret holders rights in the secret. The definition of a trade
secret varies somewhat from state to state, but commonly have the same
elements. For example, AThe information must be secret, Anot of public
knowledge or of general knowledge in the trade or business, a court
will allow a trade secret to be used by someone who discovered or
developed the trade secret independently or if the holder does not
take adequate precautions to protect the secret.
In 1964 the United States Copyright Office began to register
software as a form of literary expression. The office based its
decision on White-Smith Music Co. v. Apollo , where the Supreme Court
determined that a piano roll used in a player piano did not infringe
upon copyrighted music because the roll was part of a mechanical
device. Since a computer program is textual, like a book, yet also
mechanical, like the piano roll in White-Smith, the Copyright Office
granted copyright protection under the rule of doubt.
In 1974, Congress created the Natural Commission on New
Technological Uses (CONTU) to investigate whether the evolving
computer technology field outpaced the existing copyright laws and
also to determine the extent of copyright protection for computer