IP Law Software Research Paper

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Abandoned Software

That most people do not "have the facts" about copyrights should surprise nobody. Let's be real here -- copyright law is complex, often vague or nuanced, and there are multiple different copyright regimes. No reasonable person would believe in this 24-hour rule, but there should be zero expectation that anybody other than copyright lawyers would have a firm grasp of copyright law.

That people do not know about copyright law by no means is the driving factor for unauthorized copyright usage -- let's dispense with the childish, loaded word "piracy." We're talking about people who are using software, not hijacking, raping and murdering it. The Moores and Esichaikul (2010) highlights a couple of things that are worth considering in this discussion. First, they note that people like to share software, and that this sharing is a far more common occurrence than, say, people who would violate most other aspects of law. People tend not to use physical goods without paying, and are far more likely to use non-physical goods like software without paying. Most people have only a rough familiarity with criminal law, yet tend to err on the side of caution with respect to committing acts that might be deemed illegal. The same cannot be said about software.

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Ignorance of the finer nuances of copyright law may exist, but they do not contribute to people's propensity for unauthorized software usage, or for software sharing.

There are, however, explanations for the phenomenon. The Moores article inadvertently highlights one reason -- nobody trusts either the software companies nor the law on this issue. Consider the absurd statement "counterfeiting and piracy…cost the U.S. economy $200-250 billion a year, with the subsequent loss of some 750,000 jobs." The dollar figure is tough to pin down, but anybody with even the slightest proclivity to critical thought will know that there are no incremental job gains to purchasing MS Office (this paper was written on a purchased version, thank you very much). The product has been made, MSFT records massive profits with their 80% gross margin, and if they make a few billion more or a few billion less, there is no correlation with job creation. There is a credibility gap with such statements, or claims of poverty from the world's richest software, media and clothing companies. Or facile misstatements of Econ 101 dogma as we see at the beginning of Asongu (2014) -- competition does not derive from IPRs, profits do. "Anti-piracy" discussions are too often riddled with….....

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