Introduction
Software piracy can be defined as "copying and using commercial software purchased by someone else". Software piracy is illegal. Each pirated piece of software takes away from company profits, reducing funds for further software development initiatives.
The roots of software piracy may lie in the early 1960s, when computer programs were freely distributed with mainframe hardware by hardware manufacturers (e.g. AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Electric and General Motors). In the late 1960s, manufacturers began selling their software separately from the required hardware.
Current illegal software in the US accounts for 25 - 50% of the software in use (see web sites below for further detail). Other countries often have levels of piracy well beyond that of the US. For example, Carol Bartz, the president and chairman of Autodesk, Inc (www.autodesk.com) reports that one of their flagship products, AutoCAD, has 90% of the computer-aided design (CAD) market in China, yet sales are virtually negligible due to the widespread acceptance of software piracy. A number of annotated web sites at the end of this document contain information regarding estimates of software piracy throughout the world. Bartz also states that many software companies are reluctant to pursue the educational market due to concerns that several copies of purchased software may lead to millions of copies of illegal software, produced "in the name of educating children".
Issues
As stated earlier, software piracy is illegal. Ironically, many who pirate software are fully aware of the legalities, though they are able to rationalize continuing the practice. Some have difficulty understanding the distinction between freeware, shareware and commercial software. Others believe students won't be able to take advantage of the many technology-based educational opportunities without access to unaffordable software. Since software budgeting is often inadequate, and occasional upgrade of hardware makes older versions of software obsolete after several years, some think the only "solution" to the problem is to pirate newer versions of past purchased software. Finally, some people don't believe that software piracy is truly stealing because there is no loss of a tangible product involved in the act of piracy.
Both the US government and software companies are actively involved in efforts to eliminate piracy. The two major groups of software manufacturers involved in this effort are the Software Publishers Association (http://www.spa.org) and the Business Software Alliance (http://www.bsa.org/index.html). These organizations regularly bring suit against companies involved in piracy, provide a hotline for reporting software piracy and provide web pages for online reporting of software piracy. The US government's FBI has a Computer Crime Squad (http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/t1000/153/fbiinfo.html), who has raided numerous homes and offices, confiscated computers and shutdown numerous nationwide software piracy rings over the last several years.
Here are the few links , which you will find useful for making your notes
Piracy report
Piracy doc
Here's a whole book on software piracy
Piracy exposed Full Book
For the time being enjoy!
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