Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
geration. Not everyone who gets a free copy of a computer game has the money or the
desire to purchase the game for $50. In fact, sometimes software copying may lead to a
sale. A person may not have been interested in buying a particular program. After trying
it out for free, the person may decide it is so useful she is willing to buy a copy of the
program in order to get access to all of the documentation, the technical support line,
or another service provided to registered users of the program. It is fair to say that copy-
ing software sometimes results in reduced sales of software, but it is not always the case.
Hence it is incorrect to make a universal statement.
The second claim is that reduced sales of software result in a decline in the soft-
ware industry. An argument against this claim is the continued success of Microsoft,
despite the fact that software counterfeiting is prevalent in some countries. A better ar-
gument against the claim is that it makes a strong cause-and-effect connection between
the creation of software and financial remuneration. However, the open-source move-
ment demonstrates many people are willing to create software without being rewarded
financially. Some people write programs because they find it fun. Others are motivated
by the desire to gain a good reputation by writing a program many people find useful.
Advocates of open-source software, including Richard Stallman, suggest that the best
way to stimulate innovation is to allow a free exchange of ideas and source code. From
this point of view, allowing software producers to control the distribution of their code
stifles, rather than promotes, innovation in the software industry.
Finally, the second claim assumes that software customers are solely responsible for
the health of the software industry. In reality, other groups want to ensure that there are
plenty of new software titles released. Intel, for example, makes its money from selling
CPU chips. Every year the chips are faster. If a person owns a computer fast enough to
run his current programs, he has little motivation to upgrade the hardware. However,
if that same person purchases a new program that requires additional CPU cycles, he
may be motivated to upgrade his computer. Hence it is in Intel's interest to encourage
the development of ever more computationally intensive computer programs. Software
customers are not solely responsible for promoting the growth of the software industry.
The third claim is that new software packages benefit society. This is a difficult claim
to prove. Certainly some programs benefit society more than others. Hence it's not the
number of different programs that matters; it's what they can be used for. The utility of
new software titles must be weighed against the utility of letting people give away copies
of programs that would help their friends.
We have examined two arguments for why society ought to provide intellectual property
protection to software creators. The first argument is based on the notion of just deserts.
It is a variation of the natural rights argument we discussed at the beginning of the
chapter. This argument is weak; it rests on the faulty assumption that a natural right
to own property extends cleanly to intellectual property.
The second argument is based on consequences. It holds that denying intellectual
property protection for software would have harmful consequences. It relies upon a
chain of cause-and-effect relationships: copying leads to a loss of revenue, which leads to
