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Current
Events
Companies all over the united states are
taking a stand against music piracy, and the punishments are becoming harsher.
The focus of many industries lately is mainly on college kids right now and
cracking down on them. the Recording Industry Association of America (RIIA) has
been aggressively cracking down on the distribution of copyrighted music by
servers on college campuses and warning universities to shut them down.
In
one instance a 22-year-old student of the university of oregon: Jeffry Levy,
became one of the first MP3 casualties when he was caught and pleaded guilty to
distributing illegal music files over the Net. Levy was sentenced to two years
probation with periodic drug tests and a limit on his access to the Internet.
recently, 71 students at the Carnegie Mellon University were disciplined after
posting illegal MP3 files. The University of South Carolina was involved with
one of their students when they were caught distributing illegal MP3s.
There
are several laws that apply to illegal MP3s, Among them are the No Electronic
Theft Act, and the Digital Millennium copyright act. Many Standard copyright
laws also apply on the Net. Many education campaigns are been created on campus
to inform students of the risks involved with music piracy. When kids come to
registration, each student is given a computer-use policy manual, and
newsletters. There are teams that tracks music pirating on the Net using an
automated crawler that archives pages with dates and time stamps. The schools
are then informed of the specific student(s) that were involved, and the dates
and the computer that were used are available for trial.
Microsoft has its own policies against software piracy and they fall under
four different categories:
First, Microsoft focuses on education and awareness to help consumers recognize
the risks of software piracy, particularly on auction sites.
Second, Microsoft participates in global investigations to identify and
eliminate the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit software.
Third, Microsoft is helping to develop broad solutions to help
consumers, ISPs, auction sites and industry organizations work together and
apply important codes of conduct that help set expectations and business
guidelines so that consumers have a better understanding of what to expect when
they shop online.
Fourth, Microsoft is working alongside government to strengthen
copyright laws to protect software and/or increase penalties for infringement,
and working with law enforcement agencies to encourage adherence to those laws.
Many
Studies have found that the software industry loses roughly $12 billion every
year due to illegally copied software. The Pirated software may contain bugs and
other flaws that could harm other content on a computer. Such software usually
also lacks technical documentation. Using pirated software also increases the
risk of exposure to computer viruses. In the End, the use of pirated software
hurts everyone, because it will cause software companies to hike prices so they
can make up for their losses.