Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Reduced software
sales result in
a decline in
the software
industry.
Fewer software
products means
fewer benefits
for society.
A decline in the
software industry
will result in
fewer products.
Copying software
results in reduced
software sales.
Software copying
is wrong.
FIGURE 4.13
The chain of reasoning of a consequentialist argument for why copying
software is bad. (Beth Anderson)
tomato juice with the salt water, you do not own the ocean. Instead, you have lost your
can of tomato juice. Certainly it would be unjust if someone else could claim ownership
of something you labored to produce, but if there were no notion of property ownership
and everybody understood when they mixed their labor with something they lost their
labor, it would be just.
Of course, we do live in a society that has the notion of ownership of tangible
property. How can we justify giving a farmer the right to the crop he labors to produce
while failing to give a programmer the right to the accounting program he produces for
the benefit of the farmer?
Still, if we do want to give ownership rights to those who produce intellectual
property, we run into the problems we discussed at the beginning of the chapter. The
second criticism of the “just deserts” argument is that Locke's natural rights argument
does not hold up well when extended to the realm of intellectual property. There are
two crucial differences between intellectual property and tangible property. Each piece
of intellectual property is unique, and copying intellectual property is different from
stealing something physical.
A second argument in favor of providing intellectual property protection for software
producers is based on consequences. Failing to provide this protection would have net
harmful consequences. The argument goes like this [134]: When software is copied,
it reduces software purchases. If less software is purchased, less money flows to the
producers of software. As a result, less new software is produced. As a whole, new
software titles benefit society. When the number of new titles drops, society is harmed.
Therefore, when software is copied, society is harmed. Copying software is wrong.
You can view this argument as a chain of consequences (Figure 4.13). Copying
software causes software sales to drop, which causes the software industry to decline,
which causes fewer products to be released, which causes society to be harmed. Logically,
all the links in the chain must be strong in order for the argument to be convincing. We
will look at each of the links in turn, and we'll see that none of them are strong.
The first claim is that copying software results in reduced sales of software. When
talking about software piracy, the computer industry cites the dollar value of the copied
software as if each instance of copying represents a lost sale. Obviously this is an exag-
