Software Piracy :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Software Piracy It is becoming increasingly difficult to manage a company without being involved with decisions concerning software package. In our current northwestward American society, nearly every firm uses some form of specialized software whether in the payroll department where the Chief Financial Officer almost certainly employs specialized financial software to make financial projections, or through the use of computer interaction with the company bank. Manufacturing firms for example, rely heavily on specialized software for inventory control, billing, shipping and other critical functions. There are also various firms that develop new products and often use computer-aided radiation diagram (CAD) software to develop and refine product ideas. This perhaps may lead one to argue that virtually every department within a young company relies somewhat on the use of computer software (Baumer & Poindexter, 2002 85). As such, it becomes increasingly important to recogn ize the various forms of software piracy and the necessary stairs to be taken in order to prevent such abuses of Intellectual Property.Make or Buy Weisband and Goodman (1993 30-33) define software piracy as the direct, unlicenced copying of a program for commercial gain. The use of software involves a classic make or buy decision based on iii options. The first option is that a firm may hire programmer-employees or an outside firm to create the software. The drawback in this situation is that the final product may be less than perfect, as employees who have previously created working software for a firm often re-use certain parts of it to save money. In these situations, the electric receptacle of ownership of the software is relatively simple. If the creator of the software is an employee, the employer of that person is automatically the owner of the copyright. The second option available to the firm is to contract with a software vendor of copyrighted and tradema rked software for installation of their software, noting that a license promise is necessary and secondly that various terms in the license agreement can be negotiable. In this situation the use of software is often restricted to normal operations meaning that the licensee cannot sell or rent admission price of the software to any other firm, and secondly that the use of software is restricted to a limited number of people within the firm (Baumer & Poindexter, 2002 102).