COMPUTER PIRACY

Computer Piracy

Computer Piracy

Introduction

With the vast update in technology, CD writers and recorders and such products, computer piracy has become a tremendous issue in the past few years and continues to grow. Computer piracy occurs when software gets copied without permission from the copyright holder, this usually then leads to the copyright holder not receiving any incentive for his/her invention. Not only does this cheat the system but it's illegal as well.

There are five types of software piracy that face us today. They consist of, soft lifting, hard disk loading, renting, downloading and software counterfeiting. Soft lifting occurs when someone buys a single licensed copy of the software and loads it on several computers, opposing what the license says. An exception can be made to this rule when a person creates a backup copy of the software for emergency use of their computer only. Yet, if the software is created for friends and other personal computers this goes against the authorization. Hard disk loading is when the unauthorized copies of software are placed on the disk when you buy a new PC. This occurs within computer dealers, because the market has become so competitive and many dealers try to add in more software for a better value so one presumes their corporation is the best. Renting means having software for temporary use, it is illegal to rent out software for a while with the intention on giving it back. For example, people can rent video games yet; they cannot rent software because software is loaded onto your computer and not just read by a drive such as a video game.

Discussion

Though software computer piracy is the most common known to us today, there are other forms of piracy that are being dealt with. Emulation for example, is the process of imitating another machine through the use of software programs. This can allow a person to run different companies software on a different model computer, (i.e. Macintosh on an IBM, this also includes video games such as Nintendo, etc). "Pirates" construct emulation by creating a backup device to copy the ROM, (Read only memory), to a software format on the computer. The emulator is then used which loads the ROM, the combination of which imitates the hardware of the original machine and the microchip of the cartridge. Though the distribution of emulators is not illegal, the distribution of ROMs is. (Cole, Computer Piracy).

Movies have recently become part of computer piracy. With today's new technology and video compression formats people can fit a whole movie on a CD. Four of the most common video compression techniques are DivX, Real Video, Asf and MPEG. DivX usually has the best quality but takes up a whole CD. Yet while MPEG is the standard format for the video on a computer, it is not the most popular of the four choices on playing a video on the computer, the video can be created into a video compact disc which could then be watched through your DVD ...