Sometimes, it's difficult to understand the difference between ethical and unethical; between what's right, and what's wrong. When a company creates an expensive software programs that individual people need to do their everyday job they are faced with the decision of finding an alternative solution to purchasing this program or illegally copying the program without paying for it. Decisions like these are made every day and everyone has their own way of coming up with their solution and justifying it. Copying software is illegal, it takes profits away from companies large or small. It is also something punishable by law.
Software companies spend billions of dollars developing new software for people to use, if they weren't around, the world would not be where it is today. So why steal from those companies? Because they have lots of money already? Because they probably won't notice anyway? Or simply because you think you need the program triumphs all? In an article for the Journal of Marketing titled "Software Piracy: Estimation of Lost Sales and the Impact on Software Diffusion," they mention, ".among these industries the software industry was identified as having lost the most sales to pirates, $9 of $17 billion" "(Page 29). People don't realize that each and every one pirated copy of a program adds up. The article also adds "40% (one of 2.5) of the software used in the United States is illegal" (Fortune1994). "However, the United States is not the only pirating country. Countries like Spain and Italy actually have a higher percentage of pirating than the U.S. Not only does software pirating affect those companies but it has an effect on the economy as a whole as well. .
In the Journal of Business Ethics, the article titled "The Morality of Software Piracy: A Cross-Cultural Analysis" mentions that, "theft of intellectual property" costs the U.S. more than US$40 billion annually in lost sales and royalties.