New technologies often create new forms of productivity and business as well as new forms of theft. Such is the case for computer software and the programmers and firms that develop and manufacture it. Many times software piracy may be accidental, such as a firm or individual not realizing that sharing one copy of software between many computers on a server without purchasing licenses for each computer using it is illegal. Yet, more often the theft is intentional in an effort to reduce budgets or avoid paying for software altogether. Software is considered and intellectual property and its manufacturers and developers are protected under the Federal Copyright Act (Title 17 of the U.S. Code). In Section 106 of that Act, software companies are legally granted the “exclusive rights to reproduce the copyrighted work” (Software 1).
Typical software license agreement violations of the Federal Copyright Act include things like copying a corporation or university owned software program onto privately owned computers. The reverse of this is also a violation and so is copying a single copy of software onto more than one machine without purchasing more licenses. Putting a single copy of a software program onto a WAN (wide area network) server or LAN (local area network) server are also violations of the copyright law if additional licenses are not bought. The Federal Copyright Act is specific in its wording with regard to these types of software license agreement violations, “Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner…is an infringer of the copyright (Section 501) and subject to penalties. Persons who purchase a copy of software have no rights to make additional copies without the permission of the copyright owner, except for the rights to (i) copy the software onto a single computer and to (ii) make another copy for archival purposes only, which are specifically provided in the Copyright Act (Sec...