Software Piracy in Lebanon
Abstract
What is it about copying software that is desirable? Simply because it is free. In the United States, one might think twice before copying a Microsoft product. Copyright issues are all over the media --remember Napster? For a period of a year, we read countless stories of students all over the US and the world that were arrested for copying and trading MP3s.
However, travel across the Atlantic to the chaotic world of Lebanon and one would not even think twice about copying a version of Microsoft Office 2000. What is the likelihood of getting caught? Pretty much a 0% chance. With political chaos surrounding Lebanon since its independence in 1943, the lack of law enforcement allows a variety of of crimes to occur -- one of the biggest ones being software piracy. About 89% of the software in Lebanon is illegally obtained.
Section I gives a brief overview of how the origins of Lebanon. Section II describes the politics of Lebanon. The objective of Section I and Section II is to demonstrate to the reader how the lack of a stable government and any true law enforcement allows for so much piracy. Section III discusses in greater detail software piracy and Intellectual Property protection in Lebanon. Section IV gives the author’s point of view. Sources and endnotes can be found in Section V and Section VI respectively.
Section I: Introduction
Establishing Lebanon2
The history of the Middle East is rich with an eclectic mix of ethnicities and culture. Before World War I, the region that we now call the Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. After the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire diminished. Turkey emerged through the works of the Allies. Mesopotamia, an area filled with tradition and profitable goods, was split between Britain and France.
With the support of the French, the Maronites, a sect of the Roman Catholic Church, established a strong political status in what is now modern day Beirut, Tripoli, and most of the Lebanon coast. Starting in the early 1900s, the Maronites had pressed for the expansion of this small Lebanese territory to what they argued was its natural and historical boundaries. Their argument was that the area had always had a unique social and historical character, different from its surroundings, which made it mandatory for the French to grant it as an independent state.
However, despite the strong copyright policy and punishment of the United States Federal Copyright Act, as enforced by police as well as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), piracy still rages on, especially...
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Their study focused on information on causes, attitudes, and reasons for online piracy, which can help companies be better prepared to face piracy and stimulate legal commerce of their products. They proposed that secondary incentives, which may be harder to pirate or may not be pirated, would possibly make sales more competitive with the “free” offerings of piracy.
Piracy is the internationally recognized word to describe this type of theft. Dealing with piracy and there about such downloaders putting their hands in the pockets of Europe’s creative writers, musicians and performers and stealing their copyright income, for example, not to speak of the quantity of fake and often dangerous medicines and drugs on the market. Today the production of counterfeit and pirated products is carried out on an industrial scale.
Piracy is the copying of copyrighted material without permission from the author. Because technology is always changing, there are no fail safe methods of preventing piracy. Soon after a new preventative method comes out, someone finds a way around it, making pr...
A Worldwide Problem Software piracy is defined as the illegal copying of software for commercial or personal gain. Software companies have tried many methods to prevent piracy, with varying degrees of success. Several agencies like the Software Publishers Association and the Business Software Alliance have been formed to combat both worldwide and domestic piracy. Software piracy is an unresolved, worldwide problem, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. Software companies have used many different copy protection schemes. The most annoying form of copy protection is the use of a key disk. This type of copy protection requires the user to insert the original disk every time the program is run. It can be quite difficult to keep up with disks that are years old. The most common technique of copy protection requires the user to look up a word or phrase in the program's manual. This method is less annoying than other forms of copy protection, but it can be a nuisance having to locate the manual every time. Software pirates usually have no trouble "cracking" the program, which permanently removes the copy protection. After the invention of CD-ROM, which until lately was uncopyable, most software companies stopped placing copy protection in their programs. Instead, the companies are trying new methods of disc impression. 3M recently developed a new technology of disc impression which allows companies to imprint an image on the read side of a CD-ROM. This technology would not prevent pirates from copying the CD, but it would make a "bootleg" copy differ from the original and make the copy traceable by law enforcement officials (Estes 89). Sometimes, when a person uses a pirated program, there is a "virus" attached to the program. Viruses are self-replicating programs that, when activated, can damage a computer. These viruses are most commonly found on pirated computer games, placed there by some malignant computer programmer. In his January 1993 article, Chris O' Malley points out that if piracy was wiped out viruses would eventually disappear (O' Malley 60). There are ways that a thrifty consumer can save money on software without resorting to piracy. Computer companies often offer discounts on new software if a person has previously purchased an earlier version of the software. Competition between companies also drives prices low and keeps the number of pirated copies down (Morgan 45). People eventually tire or outgrow their software and decide to sell it.
In this paper, I will attempt to describe the piracy problem in China, discuss how the Chinese government is dealing with it, present the global effect, and finally arrive at what would be an ethical solution to piracy fitting for China's situation.
"4 Ways In Which Internet Piracy Can Be a Good Thing." MakeUseOf. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Moreover, Lebanon was and is still considered as a frontline in spreading different cultural values, understandings and the traces of the hosted three major monotheist religions and their many sects of modern times. Also, Lebanon provides an example of acceptance to the world through the unity of its diversified communities.
On the Middle East 's history, religion often has close ties with politics. As a result, when the theocracy and monarchy two combined rise and fall of a nation, unity and religious solidarity will split. Coupled with the Middle East nation of many, there are many of them among the ethnic feud deep. The more prominent is the conflict between Arabs and Jews, Persians, Kurds between there are deep contradictions between the
Intellectual property rights are normally regional; each region abides by different laws (YU, 2012). Still the software copyright holders can’t attain the patent protection worldwide. As a substitute they obtain the patent rights in each region or country they want to sell these works or products (YU, 2012). This paper will outline what Justification and rights that are obtained and how strong of a defence can be enforced in conjunction with the variations of the Intellectual property rights in each region and country. There are differences in policies and laws, the copyright holder will still try to prevent their products or works from being sold in the black market. Furthermore this paper will be discussing the salient features of the copyright and related rights act 2000 that supports this case on Intellectual property rights for each region and if it is opened to debate as to what laws are enforced to protect these rights from being copied and displayed on the internet, and how they can so be restricted to a certain region for the products and works to function. There are ways around these restrictions by modifying and changing its settings. Intellectual property rights haven’t been an issue till lately (nineteenth century) it’s difficult to establish the grounds on how to deal with it, which can be implied with the agreement on trade-related aspects.
The PC industry is just over 20 years old. In those 20 years, both the quality
The first reason why downloading and uploading copyrighted materials from the Internet should be legal is that downloading copyrighted materials positively affects the economy. The European Commission Joint Research Center reported that the profits of music companies would be 2% lower if uploading and downloading copyrighted materials were banned. However, music companies are able to acquire more profits despite illegal downloading because many people tend to purchase CDs or DVDs after watching or listening to copyrighted materials for free. Moreover, the research showed that people who download music illegally spent more money to buy music than people who did not download illegally. In addition, research conducted by the Swiss government informed that one-third of Swiss people downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet because personal use of copyrighted materials is legal in Switzerland. Even though there is a fact that many people can download copyrighted materials from the Internet legally in Switzerland, the amount of money that people spend to buy copyrighted materials is not f...