LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
In the course of this research, related works on various previous techniques applied in the prevention of software piracy are studied and reviewed in an attempt to justify its relevance and contribution within the frontiers of knowledge. Software piracy is a behavioural act, meaning that it is a deed that most people who engage in tend to be conscious of. These pirates having their different reasons for engaging in software piracy, seems not ready to quit the act as long as new software are continuously released. This is the main point of view that this research is established on for reviewing these literatures. Most of the techniques that has been employed in the past to combat software piracy only succeeded in making piracy a bit more difficult for pirates but they eventually break through at last. A perfect technique for piracy control could eventually lead to causing legitimate users so much inconvenience which is not the goal of software vendors. Piracy controls usually take account of the software manufacturer’s desire to cause legitimate users as little inconvenience as possible (jakobsson & Reiter, 2001; Merkle,
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2002). Software vendors and manufacturers has deployed several piracy control measures in which most of these measures are still in place and are often practiced in a way of combining them in order to achieve a more effective piracy control. Some of these control measures are forceful measures while some others are geared towards shaping the mind sets of various software users to voluntarily abstain from the act of piracy. Software pirates often neglect these forceful measures which come in several forms of copyright infringement laws with their associated copyright infringement penalties. Also talking down most of these pirates using moral-based control measures has also helped. Technical measures were later adopted by software manufacturers but with several limitations usually pointing towards acts of professional programmers who also engage in software piracy. According to Cronin (2011), Piracy controls may be ethical (moral-based), legal or technical. Until today, there are many researches still carried out on piracy control/prevention, but more often on the technical controls, since it seems to be the only measure that at least exempts non-programmers from the direct act of piracy. Some software vendors have also adopted a piracy control measure of seeking to hear from the pirates of their software in a way to find out reasons they download their software products without paying for them.
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“There was a point to all this, and it was partly to sell more (I have bills to pay!) as well as hopefully get more people to legitimately play my games. I'd be very happy if some reduction of overall piracy happened too, as I love PC gaming and the current situation is only helping to kill it off. I've thought hard about everything people have said and I have decided to change a few things about my games.” (Cliff, 2011).
Cliff also continued in his conclusion, “…but I think now I know more about why pirates do what they do, I'll be in a better position to keep doing what I wanted, which is making games for the PC.”
Each of these piracy control measures has no doubt contributed
its quota to the control of software piracy. The BSA (2013) has
listed resources available for learning more about preventing
software piracy. These resources are through a number of
industry organizations dedicated to this cause, as well as
government sites that describes intellectual property rights,
protections, and penalties for abuse. These industry organisations
are:
BSA: The Business Software Alliance is a global organization
formed to advance free and open world transfer for legitimate
software by advocating strong intellectual property protection.
The BSA has Global membership levels, Global Advocacy
membership level, Regional membership level, Regional Anti-
piracy Membership level, Regional Advocacy membership level
and the Country membership level. Members of the Business
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Software Alliance (BSA Global, Global Advocacy and Europe Members, 2013) are the following:
ACCA Software
Adobe
Altium Limited
ANSYS, Inc.
Apple
Autodata Limited
Autodesk
AVG
Bentley Systems
CA Technologies
CG Tech Ltd
CNC Software – Mastercam
Corel
Dell
IBM
Intel
Intuit
McAfee
Microsoft
Minitab
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NetCad Ulusal CAD
Oracle
PTC
RockwellAutomation
Rosetta Stone
Siemens PLM software, Inc.
Symantec
Tekla
The MathWorks
CAAST: The Canadian Alliance against Software Theft. This is an industry alliance of software manufacturers that share the common goal of reducing software piracy. CAAST provides educational information to corporations, consumers, academic institutions, and resellers about software theft and its implications. CAAST works with BSA.
SIIA: The Software and Information Industry Association. This is a trade organization for the software and digital content industry. SIIA offers global services in business development, government relations, corporate education, and intellectual property protection to companies. It also advocates a legal and regulatory environment that benefits the entire industry. The SIIA has the following principal mission:
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Promote the Industry: SIIA promotes the common interests of the software and digital content industry as a whole, as well as its component parts.
Protect the Industry: SIIA protects the intellectual property of member companies, and advocates a legal and regulatory environment that benefits the entire industry.
Inform the Industry: SIIA informs the industry and the broader public by serving as a resource on trends, technologies, policies and related issues that affect member firms and demonstrate the contribution of the industry to the broader economy.
FAST: The Federation against Software Theft was set up in 1984 by the British Computer Society's Copyright Committee, and was the first software copyright organization in the U.K. Its first action was to raise the awareness of software piracy and to lobby the U.K. Parliament for changes in the Copyright Act of 1956 to reflect the needs of software authors and publishers. This campaign was successful, and FAST has since been able to influence other legislation that impacts the proper safeguarding of software. The work of FAST in this area has directly influenced the way software copyright law and investigations are carried out in many other countries.
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A review on the study of piracy control measures are conducted in this course of research. The organization of this review shall be sequenced in the order: ethical measures, legal measures and technical measures. But this review shall have a broader concentration on the technical control measures than the others.
2.2 MAIN BODY
2.2.1 PIRACY CONTROL USING ETHICAL MEASURES
Pfleeger (1997) suggests that the “right to fair compensation” is a basic principle of “universal” ethics. The essence of employing ethical measures in controlling software piracy is to make software piracy morally unappealing. So many arguments have followed that piracy is morally wrong and should be avoided. Cronin (2001) has listed the ethical measures of controlling software piracy: Shareware, Amnesty and Educational/Appeal.
2.2.1.1 SHAREWARE
This is also referred to as “trialware” or “demoware”. It is proprietary software that is available free of charge on a trial basis, usually with the condition that users pay a fee for continued use and support. Around 1982, Bob Wallace PC-Write, a word processor and called it
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shareware. Later, it was established as a software marketing method. According to Wikipedia, shareware was the only economical way for independent software authors to get their products onto users’ desktops. This measure was also later put in place to make up for the excuse of people who download software products without paying for them claiming they only wanted to test the software. It gives them the opportunity to use the product for a given period and then pay for it if they like it. Shareware is usually offered either with certain features only available after the license is purchased, or as a full version but for a limited trial period of time. Shareware has been an option put in place for combating software piracy, though it does not directly stop software piracy, it is just dependent on the honesty of the customer.
2.2.1.2 AMNESTY – AS A PIRACY CONTROL MEASURE
The amnesty measure of software piracy control encourages people possess illegitimate or pirated software to surrender them with no risk of prosecution. VNZOMO (2011) posted on the internet that a 30-days Software piracy amnesty campaign was launched in Kenya in 2007 by the Kenya Copyright Board – KeCoBo, with the support of the Microsoft East and South Africa encouraging end-users running counterfeit software to “come clean” by discontinuing illegal use of software and acquiring genuine versions without penalty. With the new
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amnesty campaign, the focus was primarily on creating awareness about the prevalence of software piracy in Kenya. A “clean dealer” program was launched by Microsoft which seeks to provide all users with a list of authorised dealers and re-sellers of Microsoft software in Kenya. The “clean dealers” were facilitating the exchange of counterfeit software for genuine Microsoft software and educate users on the overwhelming number of “high quality” counterfeit software in the market. According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA) 2010
– 2011 Report, the level of piracy in Kenya dropped since 2007 – 2011 from 83% to 79%. A report from Biztech (2012) said that AutoDesk offered users of their pirated software products to approach local Autodesk channel partners to purchase legal versions of AutoCAD and related software products without fear of retroactive prosecution. This amnesty program was supported by local Kenyan authorities and stakeholders like the Kenya Copyright Board. It was aimed at not only to drastically reduce software piracy in the region to protect the local economy, but also to educate their customers on the protection from the effects of malicious coding that is often contained in pirated versions.
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2.2.1.3 EDUCATION /APPEAL – AS A PIRACY CONTROL
MEASURE
Software users are often educated to understand that purchasing software is the only fair compensation for the authors and distributors of that software. ‘APPEAL’ is an ethical piracy control measure in which a public campaign is carried out with an attempt to persuade software pirates, software distributors or software end-users to say NO to piracy or use of pirated software. The BSA fund frequent advertising campaigns in an attempt to steer public thinking towards the view that software piracy is an illegal and economically damaging activity. These campaigns are in form of letters to legislators and prominent newspapers, and paid print and media advertising (BSA creates a buzz, 2002). This ethical measure is all about changing peoples’ mindset about software piracy. An appeal to users to avoid software piracy and copyright infringements goes along with a strategy of sensitisation to end users or educating them on how best to completely avoid the act. Collard et al (2013) created seven steps on how to avoid copy infringements. These includes: understanding the scope of copyright law, avoid taking things from the internet because they are almost always copyrighted by default, don’t confuse copyright and other forms of intellectual property, be creative, learn about public domain laws for your jurisdiction, don’t rely on “fair dealings” in many jurisdictions, and finally be wary about writing fiction based on other
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works. These educational measures help to grant the necessary sensitisation on end users on believing they can willingly surrender to abstaining from software piracy. The BSA Internet Piracy Report (2009) has shown the efforts of the BSA to edu cate the people on software piracy and its effects to the society. It noted that there is significant evidence to link software piracy with the frequency of malware attacks. This is according to its findings through evidence from industry sources which suggests that markets with high software piracy rates also have a tendency to experience a high rate of malware infection.
Fig 1
MA RKETS WITH HIGH SOFTWARE PIRACY RATES OFTEN
HAVE HIGH MALWARE INFECTION RATES
SOURCES: SIXTH ANNUAL BSA AND IDC GLOBAL PIRACY STUDY; MICROSOFT SECURITY INTELLIGENCE REPORT VOL. 6 ( As cited in BSA Int ernet Piracy Report, 2009).
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The BSA Internet Piracy Report (2009) continues that Security threats such as viruses, worms, trojans, and spyware are often designed to exploit vulnerabilities in common software products, forcing software developers to constantly develop patches and other fixes to keep emerging malware at bay. Those who use pirated, unlicensed software are typically unable to access or download essential patches and critical updates that ensure their systems remain as secure as possible, and are therefore more susceptible to attack over the long term. Moreover, once infected, consumers are often forced to turn to experts to repair the damage done by the malware, often negating any savings from having acquired and used the products illegally. This has shown that end-users of pirated software whose reasons are not having the money to purchase the software they need finally end up spending money because of the damages caused by malware infections accompanying pirated software. They gave an illustration of a virus that infected at least 8 million computers globally, known as “Downadup” virus, also known as the “Conficker worm.” It was said that the virus spread rapidly in geographical areas with the highest piracy rates. Another study from IDC also shows that malware and pirated software frequently co-exist on certain Web sites that offer access to pirated software and piracy-related tools. At least a quarter of such sites were found to be rife with trojans and other security threats that are imbedded into downloaded products or distributed through
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other means to infect visitors’ computers. According to this BSA Internet Piracy Report (2009), end-users are also educated against using pirated software pertaining to what end-users often experience by themselves in the past. A survey was carried out on this effect by the Forrester Research on behalf of the BSA. One in five US consumers who purchased software online in 2006 experienced problems. Of those who had problems:
53% received software that wasn’t what they ordered;
36% reported that the software did not work;
14% immediately realized the software was pirated; and
12% never received the product.
Through this survey, the end-users were properly educated. Since piracy is a behavioural act, educative measures have indeed played a very good role in preventing software piracy. In a way of ensuring that end-users are more educated against piracy, the BSA have to partner with various organisations in order carry out effective educational outreach against software piracy. Amongst these organisations are the following:
NATIONAL COMPUTER FORENSICS TRAINING ALLIANCE (NCFTA): The NCFTA provides a neutral venue of collaboration where crucial and confidential information about cyber crime, including software piracy can be shared discreetly. The BSA started this in 2005 by sponsoring a dedicated cyber forensics analyst at the National Forensics Training Alliance (NCFTA). It also became an environment where resources can be shared among industry, academia, and law enforcement. The partnership has provided BSA with valuable data on cyber security and software piracy.
US INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT TRAINING
COORDINATION GROUP (US IPR TCG): This group was
founded in 1998, comprising of US government agencies and industry associations that provide education, training, and technical assistance to foreign officials, policymakers, departments of Justice and Commerce, US Trade Representative (USTR), FBI, US Customs and Border Protection, US Patent and Trademark Office, US Agency for International Development and Copyright Office. Private sector partners include the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), US Chamber of Commerce, International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, and other industry organizations.
SMALL BUSINESS AND ADMINISTRATION (SBA): This was created in 2007 to help educate small businesses in America against risks of software piracy. The SBA and the BSA created a program called “Smart about Software: Software strategy for Small Businesses”. A website “www.smartaboutsoftware.com” was later created containing tools and tips for responsible management. In 2008,