People Use Pirated Software example essay topic

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, CorelDraw 7: $229, Corel Office Professional 7: $190, Lotus Smart suite 96: $150, Microsoft Flight Simulator 95: $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, app z, game, 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 CollectionWazh's Warez Page Beg's Warez PageChovy's Empire The Spawning GroundsGAMEZLmax's Warez PageJugg's Warez-ListJureweb 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 Site sFTP 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 because they are usually full like us or require a username and password. 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 the mare nonsense but if you happen to stumble upon the right one, you " ll be able to get almost any crack or 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. cracksNews: alt. binaries. gamesNews: alt. crackers News: alt. cracksNews: alt. hacker News: alt. binaries. warez. ibm-p cNews: alt. binaries. warez. ibm-pc. gamesNews: 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, Qemm 8.0 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 28.8 kbp sand 14.4 kips. 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 650 MB of data. The new X 2 Technology, Cable modems, ISDN modems and Direc PC 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 28.8. 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 HongKong, 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.