Global Software Piracy Case Study

MGT 440 International Buisness Name of the case: Global Software Piracy Prepared by: xxxx Date 16-03-2010 Executive Summary: This case is taking software piracy under the light that explained at the end of the third chapter of the book International Business environments and operations by Daniels in the 11th edition. Software piracy is the mislicensing, unauthorized reproduction and illegal distribution of software, whether for business or personal use. When someone copies software without buying the appropriate number of licenses, it is copyright infringement. Individual copying software for a friend is a form  of software piracy. Types of software piracy may include: end-user piracy, pre-installed software, Internet piracy, and counterfeiting, online auction piracy. Q1. What is the relationship among the various governments, institutions, organizations, and companies in developing legal codes to combat software piracy? Companies, industry associations and governments developed arrangement and legal codes to deal with software piracy. Governments have been passing and enforcing laws supporting copyrights. The effort to condemn software piracy led to more governments joining the effort, associations such as BSA (Business Software Alliance) have members in more than 70 nations. All this effort can’t really provide significant results in the future. Other method has to be considered as well. Narrowing the gap in price of the legal and illegal copies, my encourage consumers to go for the legal copies. Other solutions is the introduction of new technologies that would limit if not kill software piracy, such as the introduction of cloud computing. Q2. In your opinion, should software companies, industry associations, home governments, or transnational institutions take the lead in aggressively negotiating with the governments of countries with high piracy rates? Why? Reading up the case, you can see the enthusiasm that most governments shown in form of enforcing laws or taking actions as well. So, what I think is instead of pushing governments to negotiate with other high rated piracy countries may lead to more complexity in their political relationships. It would be better if complies make enquires by themselves or by watchdog associations such as BSA. Other methods are through international trade channels. In the case with countries of high piracy rates, adjustments to their copyrights laws made above their accession to the WTO, china for example. Q3. Can the software industry expect to contain and control software piracy without eventually relying on governments to take a more active role? Why would the software industry dislike greater government regulation? Yes. I think software industry can contain and control software piracy without eventually relying on governments to take a more active role. This is done through technology innovation. The introduction of cloud computing has opened the door to a future with no software piracy. Cloud computing  is  Internet-based  computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like electricity. Software are to be rented or incensed by paying a fees on the user of software and no such piracy is possible in this world, unless newly discovered! Q4. In your opinion, what rationale do you think consumers in high theft countries (see Table 3. 6) use to justify software piracy? Similarly, what ideas or conditions lead consumers in lower theft countries to respect IPRs? Consumers in high theft countries tend to be more of a collectivists kind of cultures where is sharing is on of its primary features. While Consumers in high theft countries are individualistic. Q5. What sorts of political or legal solutions should the software industry lobby governments to apply to the piracy problem? Software companies should convince governments to enforce laws and legal actions in case of violations to the copyright laws. And keep pursuing international regulators such as WTO to establish piracy policies and protect the intellectual rights.