Copyright infringement of software facts for kids
Copyright infringement of software (also called software piracy) refers to the illegal copying of software, music or films or the spread of these things on the Internet. Copying movies is also called bootlegging. Some countries have laws about this. The problem is considered to be bigger in certain countries than in others. Those who hold the copyright get less money because of copyright infringement. As a result of this, some copyright holders publish “anti-piracy” campaigns to tell people about the effects of infringement.
Very often, the people making the laws have to make a trade-off between allowing people to copy and use the content, and the copyright holders charging for the content. At the same time, even not allowed distribution makes the content more popular. Because of these two reasons, infringement of copyright for proprietary software and content can be bad also for free software and content.
In 2010 to 2012, the entertainment industry advocated changes to United States law to make it easier to end piracy websites, called Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. Some websites including the English Wikipedia protested these proposals on January 18, 2012. The next day, the United States Department of Justice seized the Megaupload website which is claimed to be one of the largest piracy websites.
How to distinguish copyright infringement of software
copyright infringement of software often have those features.
- Can't offer a legal copyright certificate.
- Can't offer after-sales service.
- At low price
- Can't upgrade
Other pages
Images for kids
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An advertisement for copyright and patent preparation services from 1906, when copyright registration formalities were still required in the US
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Pirated edition of German philosopher Alfred Schmidt (Amsterdam, ca. 1970)
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Pro piracy demonstration.jpg
Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006
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The BitTorrent protocol: In this animation, the colored bars beneath all of the seven clients in the upper region above represent the file, with each color representing an individual piece of the file. After the initial pieces transfer from the seed (large system at the bottom), the pieces are individually transferred from client to client. The original seeder only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to receive a copy.
