Software Piracy Computer
Piracy is a major issue in today's society; generally piracy can be defined as illegally obtaining and utilising one's intellectual property without authorisation. For example the process of distributing Music, games and software without any consent and/or for your own benefit (copyright); also making use of other people's words without referencing and quoting where they originated from (plagiarism).
This paper's main focus is on the ethical and/or social dimensions of IT in software piracy, it will thoroughly discuss and critique three texts illustrating their different perspectives, the similarities and differences to one another, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Firstly the text “Student attitudes on software piracy and related issues of computer ethics” by Robert M. Siegfried will be discussed, secondly “Software piracy among IT professionals in organizations” by Alok Mishra, Ibrahim Akman and Ali Yazici; and thirdly “Trends and patterns among online software pirates” by Sameer Hinduja.
Firstly, the text written by Robert M. Siegfried discusses and compares the findings of three studies on student attitudes and behaviour towards software piracy. Christoph et al. (1987) initial survey has been replicated and modified numerous times with additional questions being added over time. Evidently it illustrates the ethical issues and how ultimately software piracy has vastly increased among people and students in general. Also it proves without a doubt that the increase is due to demographical factors; an example of these are age, gender and culture.
Wood & Glass (1995) established that female students are less likely to accept piracy then male students and Harris & Weaver (1994, p. 215) found that “this attitude extended to ethical issues in computer use”. Also according to Kini et al. (2000, p. 215) findings, “attitudes toward software piracy were not affected by experience with computers but were significantly affected by general demographic variables such as age.”
Although Siegfried study shows that his survey was carried out in two math and three introductory programming entry-level undergraduate classes; including a non-denominational school and a Catholic college. Compared to the two previous, which were conducted at a western (Schuster 1987) and a mid-western (Cohen and Cornwell 1989a) colleges. As well as the geographical disparity, there tend to be loads of similarities between the different types of student clusters.
This text is very concise and straight to the point; it exemplifies how undoubtedly software piracy has grown and become a major ethical issue. As a majority of students do not seem to be worried about getting caught or care what other people may think. For instance, 54% of 224 students surveyed admitted to having copied commercial software, instead of buying it (Table 2, p. 217) and 74% of students think it is okay for them to copy commercial software instead of buying it (Table 3, p. 217). Finally, this has been written from a global perspective, totally unbiased and has shown that in due course attitudes and behaviours has and will continue to slightly improve in some areas (Table 11, p. 219).
Secondly, the text written by Alok Mishra, Ibrahim Akman and Ali Yazici
The proliferation of computers in today's society has spawned new ethical dilemmas for the software industry (Simpson, Banerjee, & Simpson, 1994), which employs over 2 million people and generates over $140 billion in annual revenues (BSA, 1999).
It generally refers to the illegal use of software by corporations, businesses and individuals for personal use (Athey, Susan, & Plotnicki, 1994). Software piracy includes unauthorized copying of software by the end users, illegal installation of software on computer hard disks, counterfeit, breaches in a channel of sales, Internet piracy and the practice of loading several machines with software licensed for use on one machine only (Belousov, 2004; Prasad & Mahajan, 2003).
In a recent study, Jaeger (2003) reported that, in general, demographic factors have significant impact on individuals' attitudes towards the use of IT. Rahim, Rahaman, and Seyal (2000) and Seale, Polakowski, and Schneider (1998) also studied the relationship between demographic factors and piracy. They both concluded that gender and experience have a direct effect on self-reported piracy.
relationship between moral intensity and some important demographic factors in culturally different countries.
A recent study by Lau (2003) investigated the detailed basic elements of software piracy and social and environmental influences
(Age is a leading factor) - According to Gupta Pola, Gould, and Pola (2004), age is one of the determinant factors influencing software piracy.
perception of economic loss plays a dominant role in software piracy.
Rahim et al. (2000), who indicated that approximately half of the individuals used pirated software for their personal purposes.
IT professional (code of effects) studies - Further observations show that it is also clear that there is very limited study of software piracy among IT professionals in various organizations (see for example Banerjee, 1992; Gupta et al., 2004; Oz, 2001). Despite the huge resources that society spends on the work of IT professionals, the research conducted on the ethical behavior of these practitioners (Oz, 2001) is quite limited. As such, software piracy among IT professionals and managers in organizations of different sectors still remains unexplored. The use of pirated software among IT professionals is entirely different from the academic community. This is also a
matter of concern for the future growth of the IT community in general and software development
organizations in particular. Furthermore, most of the software piracy-related studies were conducted either in the USA or South East Asia and their findings may not be applicable to the other parts of the world due to existence of social, economic and cultural differences (Rahim et al. 2000). Also research on software piracy among IT professionals may expand the important philosophical debate on intellectual property (Seale et al.1998).
Software piracy has become a major concern over the past two decades (Peace, Galletta, & Thong, 2003; Tang & Farn, 2004).
Turkey - demographic factors such as gender, age, income, type of education and experience.
Software piracy was raised as a major issue of concern in the academic literature in the mid-1980s, when Mason (1986) presented the four major ethical issues of the information age, specifically mentioning intellectual property rights as an area for greater study. Much of the initial research into illegal software copying consisted of descriptive surveys measuring the attitudes and practices of individuals (Ang & Lo, 1998; Kowalski & Kowalski, 1990; Rahim et al., 1999, 2000; Simpson et al., 1994; Sims et al., 1996; Solomon & O'Brien, 1990; Wong, Kong, & Ngai, 1990). Other empirical research focused on ethical and legal aspects (Im & Koen, 1990; Johnson, 1985) and social costs (Conner & Rumlet, 1991; Mason, 1986). Software piracy has been investigated from other varied disciplinary perspectives also, such as level of moral development
(Logsdon, Thompson, & Reid, 1994), gender (Banerjee, 1992; Solomon & O'Brien, 1990; Wong et al., 1990), age (Nyaw & Ng, 1994; Sims et al. 1996), experience (Kini, Rominger, & Vijayaraman, 2000; Christoph et al., 1987; Kowalski & Kowalski, 1990) and legislation (Koen & Im, 1997; Malhotra, 1994).
An important dimension in the study of piracy is the magnitude of the loss for software development organizations in terms of loss of sales (Givon, Mahajan, & Muller, 1995). Besides, consumers who do not pirate must pay extra to help cover those losses (Takeyama, 1997). According to an estimate 4 out of 10 business software applications installed worldwide in 1998 were pirated, resulting in revenue losses of $ 11 billion (BSA, 1999). may lead to an increase in sales, as more people will be aware of the product.
According to Givon et al. (1995), software piracy may be responsible for more than 80 percent of new software buyers. Katz and Shapiro (1986) also supported this observation, stating that protecting against piracy may actually hurt a software firm's profitability as the resulting lower base of users would reduce the software's value.
Apart from being an illegal activity, piracy is also an ethical issue (Givon et al., 1995; Simpson et al., 1994; Sims et al., 1996; Wagner & Sanders, 2001) and Cogner, Loch, and Helft (1995) reported that ownership of information is one of the five crucial ethical issues in the information society.
Simpson et al. (1994) - note that pirating is often not considered to be unethical behavior.
The ethical justifications for protecting intellectual property are reviewed by Steidlmeier (1993). His analysis focuses on the western cultural values as the bases for restricting the use of property, including intellectual property. According to Steidlmeier (1993), two rights claims are used to legitimate copyright protection. The first one is the fundamental right to personal liberty on which all rights to private property are based. The second is the right to livelihood which is referred to as the right to get the result of one's labor. If authors are not assured of the exclusive use of their innovation, there would be no incentive to develop them (Abbott, 1990; Samuelson, 1989). Therefore, only effective intellectual property rights protection can encourage software companies to be interested in staying in the business and contributing to the prosperity of the
industry. However, many philosophers and economists contend that intellectual property rights should not be protected by law (Davidson, 1989). According to their view such protection is anti-competitive, monopolistic and stifling to innovation.
Regarding copyright protection and the impact of culture Eining and Christensen (1991) found that business students lacked an understanding of the laws regarding copying software. However, Swinyard, Rinne, and Kau (1990) observed that knowledge of copyright laws does little to discourage unauthorized copying and for people the benefits outweigh the legal concerns. Further, they argue that moral judgments may differ according to culture or national origin. Tang and Farn (2004) also supported the viewpoint that culture plays an important role and researchers have tried to discover the cultural differences in the ethical dimensions. Reasonable explanations in terms of different cultural dimensions have been proposed (Eining & Christensen, 1991; Nyaw & Ng, 1994; Swinyard et al., 1990; Vitell, Nwachukwu, & Barnes, 1993). Gopal and
Sanders (1998) also stated that there is need to study the cross-cultural aspects of software piracy.
Studies by Moores and Dhillion (2000) in Hong Kong and Moores and Dhaliwal (2004) in Singapore state that even in culturally similar markets different approaches may be required to combat software piracy. Other studies by Shore, Venkatachalam, and Solorzano (2001), Husted (2000) and Goodwin and Goodwin (1999) also observed the effects of culture on software piracy, while meta-analysis done by Ford and Richardson (1994) indicates that reference groups influence a person's ethical decision making in most studies. Al-Jabri and Abdul-Gader (1997) also confirm the influence of group belief on software piracy behavior. Social pressure is a powerful determinant of behavior (Lau, 2003).
The analysis revealed that gender is one of the key factors for the tendency towards selected software piracy factors, except in the ‘‘the use of pirated software'' and ‘‘effect of the Internet'' categories. Besides this, age and experience were found to have an impact on the ‘‘the reason for using pirated software'' only. However, income and type of education have no impact on software piracy.
w2 tests showed that the younger professionals are more likely to engage in software piracy and the lack of knowledge of the consequences of software piracy among IT professionals therefore seems to be a key factor. This suggests that efforts to reduce software piracy should be directed to increasing the ethical awareness of IT professionals. It was also found that pricing of original software is a driver for lenient attitudes to software piracy and keeping the price of original software at a reasonable level might help to deter software piracy
(Lau, 2003).
Gender, age, income, education and experience
Thirdly, the text written by Sameer Hinduja
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