Piracy Revisited

According to the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), the worldwide revenue of business-based PC applications was $21.6 billion in 1999, but global revenue losses due to piracy in the business application software market were calculated at $12 billion. These statistics drew attention not only because the losses attributed to piracy go beyond more than 50% of revenues, but also because the world piracy rates showed an increase for the first time since 1995. Particularly troublesome is the concern that software pirates can single-handedly destroy the work of software developers, who invest millions dollars in software development projects. Although special coding, fingerprinting, and other methods and techniques can protect software programs, no technological protection system yet devised is completely effective. In addition, despite the clear specification of property rights, piracy still can exist due to the high cost of policing consumer behavior and enforcing the law. As such, is likely that software piracy will remain a prevalent and a serious problem into the foreseeable future. The economics underlying the software markets have recently been identified as key Global software piracy has become an increasing concern to businesses and software developers throughout the world during the past two decades. For the U.S., which is generally considered the world leader in the software industry, the problem of piracy diminishes revenues and lessens investment in R&D, threatening the long-term viability of this important industry. Assessed damage from global software pirates is considerable: SEUNG KYOON SHIN, RAM D. GOPAL, G. LAWRENCE SANDERS, AND ANDREW B. WHINSTON BY