Article 16 and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Good evening. The is the last news post in this class and I would like to dedicate it to the Piracy and Ethics issue. Can you name the piracy acts ethical? Is it beneficial for society? Let's take a look on the article below.

Article 16. The ethics of Piracy.

http://www.cs.rpi.edu/courses/fall00/ethics/papers/bironj2.html

The article covers 2 cases:

1. Case when a pirate sells software for money.

2. Case when a pirate distributes software for free.

Let's examine each of them.

1)

a) Consider someone who copies an application developed by a large company and decides that this product is way over-priced and should be available for a much lower price. So pirate begins creating and distributing copies of the application at their new, adjusted price. The pirate in this case may think they are ethically right for providing the product at a price that they feel it should be sold at. But the fact that the pirate seeks to profit from the piracy seals off any form of ethical argument for their acts.

b) If a company discovers the existence of a pirate who is selling their product and choose not to take action, how do the ethics now apply? Sometimes it is better for the company financially to allow the pirate to continue than to take an action, but does this make the piracy ethically right?Ethically, the company is also wrong because they are allowing the unethical act of piracy to occur when they are able to take action to stop it. Therefore, in a situation such as this, the act of pirating a product is still an unethical act.

2) The second type of piracy is that in which software is obtained freely. Pirates may override whatever form of copy protection exists and distribute a product free of charge. Probably the premier argument for this type of piracy is that the companies aren’t losing anything. But using the effect of an unethical act to justify it is not a strong argument, therefore this case is unethical in terms of piracy.

So when might this sort of piracy ever be considered ethical? There is at least one case that can be shown, where the piracy is not wholly unethical. Many times, when products are pirated and freely distributed, the users are given the suggestion that if they like the software then they should purchase their own copy.

From my point of view piracy like a phenomenon is wrong. But I would like to remind that piracy industry gives much more opportunities for people, who would never use some kinds of software otherwise. It also creates additional working places and sometimes even a tax source for the government. So is it so harmful like big corporations make us to think?