Computer Software Piracy & Federal Law

This paper will discuss current Federal law relating to software piracy and hacking. The section on piracy will concentrate on Federal copyright laws and how they are applied to combat software piracy. It should be noted that the copyrightability of all aspects of software has not yet been firmly established by the copyright laws, although the 1980 amendments to the Copyright Act of 1976 did explicitly include certain aspects of software within the Act's protection. Federal court cases remain divided as to the extent of protection afforded to software. Similarly, the laws concerning hacking are not all-inclusive, primarily because there is some confusion as to whether certain types of hacking, particularly the simple accessing of certain computers, constitute crimes.

Software piracy has been a problem ever since software has been published. As more and more programs have been published, however, the problem has become even larger. Software piracy essentially consists of copying programs published by a software manufacturer; such copies are usually for the personal use of the copier, although an increasing problem is that of copiers selling the copies. The Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that U.S. software manufacturers, who produce most of the world's software, lose about $2 billion every year in lost sales due to piracy.1 The SPA estimates that in 1990 pirated software siphoned off $2.4 billion in p