Piracy economic impact

Intellectual property-based industries are significant driv­ers of the high as 50%, is known as casual copying. Casual copy­ing is the sharing and installation of software on multiple PCs in violation of the software's and user license agreement (EULA). Software and software-related services alone account for a $140.9 billion market, payment of $12.3 billions in taxes and the creation of more than 2.7 million jobs. However, software counterfeiting threatens the ability of the industry to maintain its significant contribution to the U.S. economy.

According to a 2000 software piracy study by International Planning & Research Corp., software piracy resulted in:

• 24% percent of the business software applications installed on PCs in the U.S. were pirated;

• 118,026 lost jobs;

• $5.6 billion in wages lost;

• $1.6 billion in lost tax revenue.

Worldwide, the software industry generates more than $28 billion in tax revenues annually. If privacy were eliminated in the U.S. and reduced abroad, it is estimated that the industry would produce an additional 1 million jobs by 2005 and contribute $25 billion in tax revenues.

In 2000:

• The worldwide piracy rate was 37%;

• $11.75 billion in revenue was lost.

Microsoft has developed product activation as one solution to reduce casual copying.

The majority of customers acquire Windows with the pur­chase of a new computer, and most new computers pre-loaded with Windows XP not require activation at all. Microsoft provides OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) with the ability to

UNIT 6

«pre-activate» Windows XP in the factory and estimates that up­wards of 80% of all new PCs will be delivered to the customers pre-activated.

«Pre-activation» of Windows XP by the OEMs will be done in different ways depending on the OEM's own configuration op­tions and choices. Some OEMs may protect Windows XP using a mechanism which locks the installation to OEM-specified BIOS information in the PC. Microsoft expanded and integrated the ex­isting OEM CD BIOS locking mechanism with product activation, and called this method of protection «System Locked Pre-installation», or SLP.

Successfully implemented, SLP uses information stored in an OEM PC's BIOS to protect the installation from casual piracy. At boot, Windows XP compares the PC's BIOS to the SLP informa­tion. If it matches, no activation is required.

In the unlikely scenario that the BIOS information does not match, the PC would need to be activated within 30 days by contacting the Microsoft activation center via the Internet or tel­ephone call.

OEMs may also activate Windows XP by contacting Micro­soft in the same way the consumer would activate.

In 1998 38% of software in circulation was pirated, causing approximately $11 billion in losses to the global software indus­try. Software piracy is a serious worldwide problem - particu­larly where the piracy rate in some countries is close to 100%. Contributing to the staggering piracy rate are disparate intellec­tual property and copyright laws coupled with the aggressive growth of the Internet. And although industry organizations have been successful in many of their efforts to combat software piracy, governments around the world must take steps to im­prove their intellectual property laws and enforcement system.

Without a global commitment to reducing piracy, the po­tential for world economic growth is seriously crippled. The high piracy rate inhibits the development of the software industry and precludes it from reaching its full worldwide potential by cheating legitimate budding software developers and compa-

Так[шС.9ШШ*:?Г.1?^гGranted

nies of the rights and rewards of their hard earned intellectual property.

Countries with the highest dollar losses due to software piracy:

United states, China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Italy, Canada, Russia.

Losses for these countries totaled $7.3 billion, or 67% of worldwide losses in 1998.

1. Read and try to understand the given above text

2. What's your opinion concerning softivare piracy? Will it ex­ist always?

Thank you for your hard work!

5. Relax a bit

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatev­er you hit the target.

Programming laws:

• Any given program when running is obsolete.

• Any new program costs more and takes longer.

• If a program is useful it will have to be changed.

• If a program is useless it will have to be documented.

• Any program will expand to fill available memory.

• Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities of the programmer who must maintain it.

• Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.

• Axiom: human beings are unreliable. As a consequence, any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable. Hence, hardware and software are unreliable.

• Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.

• The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think.

UNIT 6

It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a hank at night

W. Sutton My boyfriend keeps telling me I've got to own things. So, first I bought this car. And then he told me I oughta get a house. «Why a house?» «Well, you gotta have a place to park the car».

Julia Roberts Life experience

Profession

A doctor, physicist, and politician were arguing about whose profession was the oldest.

«Of course mine», said the doctor, «because Eve was created from Adam's rib, and that was a medical phenomenon».

«But before that order was created from chaos and that could be made only by physicist», said the physicist.

«Dear friends», noted the politician, but in the beginning someone had to create chaos ...

Love

«You're right», said a golfer to his wife, «I love golf more than I love you. But remember I love you more than I love tennis».

Birthday

Ann said proudly, «My grand grandfather doesn't drink, smoke, eat meat, philander with women, gamble and swear, and tomorrow he is going to celebrate his 95th birthday!»

Jack looked at her surprisingly and asked: «How?!»

Airplane

The plane took off. Suddenly it shuttered when one of the engines blew up, then another one. The passengers were in a pan-

Taking Computer for Granted

ic. A pilot asked them to keep quiet as it was nothing to worry about. Then he walked to the door of the aircraft, grabbed several packages, and handed them to the flight attendants. «Say», asked an alert passenger, «aren't those parachutes»?

«Yes, they are», answered the pilot. «But you said there was nothing to worry about», went on the passenger. «There isn't», replied the pilot as the third engine exploded. «We're going to get help».

UNIT 7

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1275