Piracy of Software - Crime That Pays

Chapter 3 Crime That Pays

1. Collection and Individualism, democracy and totalitarianism, rule of law and rule of man: What do these concepts say about the intellectual property rights of software and the legitimacy of its protection?

Individualism thinks that the piracy hurt the interest of software producer, but it also provide low-price software to many individual. At that aspect, the individual won't make every effort to protect the intellectual property right.

Collection, on the contrary, thinks that the piracy satisfies the self-interest of the piracy producer who is just a small part of population. In fact, the piracy cause a massive number of loss to the national economy. Hence, the collection will try to make contribute on the protection of intellectual property right.

Democracy always standing on the side of majority people. Because of the piracy offend the interest of the whole nation. So, a democracy government will take action to protect the intellectual property right.

Totalitarianism supports the power of the minority.  The government will use laws to restrict piracy of software and take severe actions to suppress those violators.

Rule of law will use the law to punish those who violate the law. The piracy, which obviously is broken the laws, will be punished according to the law. A government that believes this belief will support the protection of intellectual property right.

Rule of man toughly punish those who have offended the individual's authority. So they will take some extreme actions to protect the intellectual property right.

1. What is the relationship among governments, institutions, organizations, and companies in developing the legal means fight software piracy?

They are cooperated together to fight software piracy and play their role in this fight.

The government makes laws and the industry association spearheaded efforts to policy' business development, and corporate education. As counter offensive software companies, they have relied on technical and business measure. Software companies,government,organizations have urged transactional institutions to police piracy, then lobbied members to ratify an array of antipiracy treaties.