E-Piracy
E-Piracy – Software Piracy and Hard Disk Loading
The topic our SIG group was given for the assignment is E-Piracy. E-Piracy is the illegal downloading or uploading of digital copies or such material such as films, music and e-books. The topic I have chosen within E-Piracy is Hard Disk Loading which is a type of software piracy.
Software piracy is defined as the unauthorized use, duplication, distribution or sale of commercially available software. [1]
The first known case of Software Piracy was in 1975 MITS released a basic interpreter software on 4K cards which weren’t up to standards so copies were made of larger and more effective cards by members of the Homebrew Computer Club. In the 1990’s Rusty and Edie’s BBS was raided by the FBI for having over 14,000 subscribers paying $89 a year to access 100,000 files and Russ and Edwina Hardenburgh were arrested for software piracy. 2007 brought Robert Koster and Yutaka Yamamoto were convicted after pleading guilty to selling more than $6million in pirated automation software through E-bay.
What is Hard Disk Loading?
Hard disk loading is one of the 5 main types of software piracy. It may not seem a crime to most people but it is as serious as film or music piracy. It is illegal and is a type of theft. Hard disk loading usually occurs when hardware dealers; brick-and-mortar or internet vendors, install an unauthorised copy of commercial software onto a computer system. It is most common with operating systems especially older Microsoft branded systems like Windows 95 and Windows 98. The people who build the systems will purchase a legal copy of the software and then install it on to computer hard drives; they also reproduce and copy the software to sell on. When the PC is sold the hard disk will contain the pre-installed software. The reselling of the computers with the installed software usually happens in computer resale shops and the resellers will charge extra for the illegitimate software, this charge will
The topic our SIG group was given for the assignment is E-Piracy. E-Piracy is the illegal downloading or uploading of digital copies or such material such as films, music and e-books. The topic I have chosen within E-Piracy is Hard Disk Loading which is a type of software piracy.
Software piracy is defined as the unauthorized use, duplication, distribution or sale of commercially available software. [1]
The first known case of Software Piracy was in 1975 MITS released a basic interpreter software on 4K cards which weren’t up to standards so copies were made of larger and more effective cards by members of the Homebrew Computer Club. In the 1990’s Rusty and Edie’s BBS was raided by the FBI for having over 14,000 subscribers paying $89 a year to access 100,000 files and Russ and Edwina Hardenburgh were arrested for software piracy. 2007 brought Robert Koster and Yutaka Yamamoto were convicted after pleading guilty to selling more than $6million in pirated automation software through E-bay.
What is Hard Disk Loading?
Hard disk loading is one of the 5 main types of software piracy. It may not seem a crime to most people but it is as serious as film or music piracy. It is illegal and is a type of theft. Hard disk loading usually occurs when hardware dealers; brick-and-mortar or internet vendors, install an unauthorised copy of commercial software onto a computer system. It is most common with operating systems especially older Microsoft branded systems like Windows 95 and Windows 98. The people who build the systems will purchase a legal copy of the software and then install it on to computer hard drives; they also reproduce and copy the software to sell on. When the PC is sold the hard disk will contain the pre-installed software. The reselling of the computers with the installed software usually happens in computer resale shops and the resellers will charge extra for the illegitimate software, this charge will
References: [1] Conner, K.R. and Rumelt, R.P. Software piracy: An analysis of protection strategies. Man. Sci. 37, 2 (1991), 125–139. [2]