The Issue

When you purchase Software for your computer you are not buying the software itself, but rather you are buying a licence or right to use the software on a single machine, or a group of machines if you have purchased a network licence.

The software licence that you have purchased will normally outline the terms of the agreement you entered into on purchase - one of these terms normally prevent you from making additional copies of the software. When you load this software onto your PC you acknowledge these terms before the program allows you proceed with loading.

Some people believe this is unreasonable, but developing good software takes time, considerable talent and money. If copyright was not regulated, then these companies would not be able to recover their costs and stay in business to produce the next version or replacement software.

Copyright - the Facts

To start our research on Software Copyright, we should first look at the Copyright Law for software available from the Australian Copyright Council at http://www.copyright.org.au/. Select Information Sheets, and then the Information Sheet on Computer Software (G50)

	What is the purpose of copyright? (p1)
	When is copyright infringed? (p2-3)
	When is it legal to make a back-up copy? (p3)
	Is it a criminal offence to copy computer software? (p5)

Legal Obligation of a Business

A business has a legal obligation to ensure that all software has been legally purchased. Using software that has been illegally copied is known as software piracy. If a business is found using illegal software they are liable to prosecution and can, and have been, fined. It is therefore important that a business takes steps to prevent piracy of software. View the following sites to read about some of the measures taken by Australian organisations in preventing piracy.

One of the first steps for a business is to have a policy distributed to all it employees - here are a few examples.

	The University of Melbourne clearly outlines it requirements at http://www.acs.unimelb.edu.au/software/copyright-circular.html
	The Tasmanian Education department has similar requirements at http://info.tased.edu.au/imb/software_copyright.htm
	The Australian National University also reiterates the need for http://its.anu.edu.au/itinfo/guide.html

Penalties for Software Piracy

The penalties for software piracy are significant as mentioned in the last article. The Business Software Association of Australia has comprehensive information as well as list of Australian companies that have been prosecuted for Software Piracy at their web site http://www.bsaa.com.au and the link of Pirates on Parade. The list of settlement values indicates that software piracy is to be taken seriously. Microsoft also has a similar page at http://www.dilithium.com.au/images/microsoftenforcement/index.htm

There are some interesting facts also available from The Software and Information Industry Association for Anti-Piracy available from http://www.siia.net/piracy/faq/default.asp and http://www.spa.org/piracy/copyright/law.asp

Apart from the Business having the onus of ensuring they are complying with Licence agreements and by default, not pirating software, the producers of software have also started to included various features in their software that prevent people copying them. Visit the Microsoft Piracy Page at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/piracy/ to find out about counterfeiting, hard-disk loading and 'grey-market' software.

Microsoft has also developed hologram engraving, product activation codes and other measures to reduce the incidence of piracy, find out more from http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/

Finally there is an excellent overview of the whole situation at

	http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/spr1_a.shtm
	http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/spr1_b.shtm, and
	http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/spr1_c.shtm

Your Task

If you have visited the sites described above, you should have sufficient background, to answer the following:

	What the issue is about?
	Why is the issue important?
	What is the relevance of the issue to the information system being studied?
	How has the business you are studying addressed the issue?
	What has been done in the business to address the issue (list measures that have been taken and critically evaluate their effectiveness)?
	What is the impact on the business?