Crilism (crilism) wrote, @ 2005-08-18 11:14:00

The copyright debacle
My dad says that there is no way of stopping piracy (music, software and so on). He is a firm believer that professional piracy cannot be ever stopped.

I disagree.

I told him that professional piracy must and will stop, it has not stopped yet because of a lack of will power from the world's governments. In spite of all the clout that the software, video and music companies enjoy, they can't push people around, so the government is vary of enforcing strict laws worldwide. And when it comes to software this lack of will is even more pronounced because software is expensive and vital for computer users. If licensed software is not available it gets in the way of the people becoming more computer savvy which is a big problem for countries like India and China which are depending on computer skills to push their economies to the next level. That's why India never really had any copyright enforcement and China actually promotes piracy at all levels.

This is changing for two reasons.

1. There is better copy protection technology available.
The pirates have created an all new market, that of copy protection technology. Today the copy protection technology available in the market is very effective. In fact the one that I use now in my some of my software hasn't been cracked yet in India, so I am enjoying respectable sales. This will only get better because of the amount of money that the companies are losing. Many former crackers have turned to marketing their own copy protection software now. No matter what the detractors say, I believe that copy protection technology will play a big role in putting a stop to professional piracy, and yes there will be protections which cannot be cracked.

2. More will from the goverment
I think we should thank the open source movement. Nowadays free and good alternatives are available to every professional software available in the market be it OS, word processing solution, programming, etc. So the software companies have realized that they cannot continue over pricing their software. This is going to help the entire market. The prices of licensed software will keep going down, and good quality open source software will be increasingly more available so that no computer user is left out. Internet has a big role to play in this.

The availability of alternatives to expensive licensed software has also freed up the government a bit. Now that its populace is not constrained by the lack of good free software the government can enforce laws more strictly. That is why there is more action on pirates everywhere, even China.

I believe that in about 3 years the scene is going to get really hot for professional pirates worldwide. They won't enjoy the kind of freedom they have on the Internet now, and that is when companies marketing licensed software will have even better prospects.

The key is to survive till then, and we all committed to doing it.

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