Conventional piracy is robbery committed at sea. However, software piracy refers to obtaining software through illegal means. In Singapore last year, software piracy was at its lowest in recent years at 39%, down from 43% in 2003. Software piracy cost companies millions of dollars annually. Furthermore, as it is extremely difficult and unrealistic to catch every single offender, usually only those who do it on a large scale are prosecuted. This poses a big problem to Singapore’s growing technology industry. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) aims to make Singapore a high value manufacturing hub in Asia to enhance Singapore’s competitiveness in the industrial sector. Not only will software piracy contribute to a loss in revenue of the industry, it will also discourage aspiring computer geniuses from working for the government. One of the biggest problems posed to curbing this problem is teenagers. Downloading software illegally is free and it is very easy to do so. Therefore, teenagers, without much pocket money and influenced by their peers, turn to illegal downloads to get the latest games and music online. Considering the fact that teenagers make up most of the computer users, to the extent that they might even be more computer literate than their parents, they contribute to a major portion of illegal downloads. For example, even if I do not download music illegally from the internet, I lend and borrow music CDs to/from my friends. This makes use of the under-licensing of music CDs, as they can be uploaded to any computer with no limit, and therefore, also contributes to losses made by companies due to software piracy. As the music CDs get passed around in a teenager’s network of friends, music companies can make losses multiple times the price of one CD. As teenagers look upon downloading software as convenience, without having to pay online through lengthy purchase forms nor going down to the store to buy the software, they might not care whether companies make a loss or not. However, much effort has been put in to discourage software piracy. Education revolving around looking at software piracy from others’ viewpoints, advertisements in movies, passing and upholding laws are ways which the government uses to battle software piracy. Furthermore, the rise of reasonable alternatives such as freeware has reduced the rate of software piracy. The software is free and available for download, and so is termed “freeware”. For example, Mozilla Firefox, a free web browser, is steadily replacing its counterpart Internet Explorer by Microsoft. These freeware are dependent on advertisements and donations to support themselves, and therefore remain free. As teenagers develop into adults, it is imperative that they do not participate in software piracy. This leads to a probable downward spiral where everyone is influenced by their parents and companies fold because of software piracy. Therefore we must make sure that this does not happen. What’s the cost of downloading freeware instead of getting caught downloading illegally? Priceless. (496 words)
