Ethical Issues with the Software Piracy Issue

Computer ethics deals with moral responsibility of what is wrong and right. Based on ? Importance of Computer Ethics and Software Piracy? article, software piracy is copying, distributing, and using software or games without paying. Software Piracy is a form of ethical issue that is hard to solve in society, especially among students of Faculty of Computer Science University of Indonesia. Based on writer observation in campus, students are still using pirated software, including using, duplicating, and distributing it to their friends.

This attitude of course violates developer’s intellectual property. The article also mentions about intellectual property and penalties for those who violate computer ethics laws. Intellectual property is including images, patents, procedures, videos, audios, and drawings. For those who violate someone’s intellectual property will be given penalties—paying hefty fines to extensive prison time. But even so, it seems the penalties are still blurring for students. Nowadays, information technology has widely grow and used by human.

Computer technology, both hardware and software has been widely approved as an intellectual property. The fast growth of technology innovation, especially software, is open for public and can be easily accessed by public via internet. It is the same for software piracy. Serial key, hack-version, and more other ways are easily accessible and widely available. Based on ? Ethical Issues in Software Piracy? article, someone should have a moral responsibility in using software. So, from internal-self of user should be aware of someone’s intellectual property.

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W. D. Ross stated ? The Right and the Good? as our guideline to prove our moral responsibility toward software and/or its developer. Software piracy would cause loss of revenue for the developer. Thus, it will decrease developer’s motivation in designing new software. Impacts of software piracy explained above are mostly occurred because of human and economic factor. Based on the article, software piracy occurred mostly in developing-countries; because of their low economics (from GDP per capita), they find it harder to purchase software.

Indonesia is one of developing-countries, so it can be concluded roughly that Indonesian people hard to pay for software. In smaller scale, Indonesian social levels have a representative number of users in technology. Social level is about divided in three level; low, medium, and high class. In Faculty of Computers and Society, students also varied in social level or economic level. Some students have Iphone, Windows Phone, or tablets, but some don’t. In general, there is no difference among those levels. Every student is using technology. But in majority, students didn’t put much attention toward software piracy issues.

Those who have laptops may prefer using unlicensed operating system than using open source operating system. It is a form of software piracy—using without paying. In addition, current status of our community is still far from the word ? ethical?. We have not appreciating others’ property as well as we did to ourselves yet. The rule in ? Kode Etik Mahasiswa Fasilkom? , point two stated ? …including appreciates intellectual property?. Students of Faculty of Computer Science already know about this rule. In fact, it’s not the same as in the implementation, ignorance being a common habit.

Ignorance regarding unlicensed software caused software piracy. Majority tend to have neither attention nor self-control in using unlicensed software. Some may didn’t know that it is unethical. But some maybe already know that what he/she doing is wrong, but even so he/she is still doing it just because everybody—community—is doing it. Our community is affecting us. A student may be an example for his/her friends or his/her community. He/she may use unlicensed software that is followed by others. This ignorance habit can damage our own personal ethical which embedded in our heart.

Furthermore, we start believing that our wrong-doing is right. In analyzing software piracy, writer think students should have an awareness and moral responsibility. A developer of software may not know that his/her intellectual property was just being used irresponsibly. Student of Faculty of Computer Science should have known how hard it is to make software. They should have aware how long time needed, how many resources sacrificed by the developer to develop software. In student’s point of view, they need it but they don’t want to give more when people are not giving anything.

For example, an antivirus should be bought for some prices, but some students found that there is a forever-renew-trial of the antivirus, so that they don’t have to pay. Along with economic principle, ? with less effort, can gain more? , we don’t want to sacrifice more than others. It became a serious problem. As a conclusion, how to overcome this issue? It is a professional standard, based on the article; Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) stated that any person who wants to join the ACM should accept ? Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct? which covers the ethical issues surrounding oftware piracy. Writer think we can do as ACM do. Article entitled ? The Rules? also stated that computer artifact—both software and hardware—has rules for both its developer and user, so that they will have morally ethical in developing or using software. It has seven rules which allow and avoid both developer and user to do something about the computer artifact. These rules should be well-applied as a solution for software piracy issue. In the top of those solutions, human factor is the main factor that we should pay more attention.

References

1. K. W. Miller, Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: ? The Rules?. Illinois: IEEE, 2011.
2. Unknown. (2011). Kode Etik Mahasiswa Fakultas Ilmu Komputer Universitas Indonesia [Online]. Available: http://scele. cs. ui. ac. id/file. php/1434/Kode_Etik_Mhsw_Fasilkom. pdf
3. Thurlow, Max. Ethical Issue in Software Piracy [Online]. Available: http://www. ehow. com/list_6669954_ethical-issues-software-piracy. html
4. Boone, Kevin, Importance of Computer Ethics and Software Piracy [Online]. Available: http://www. ehow. com/facts_5766300_importance-computer-ethics-software-piracy. html

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