Software Crimes: The Ethical and Economical Downfalls.
In 1996, worldwide illegal copying of domestic and international software cost $15.2 billion to the software industry, with losses of $5.1 billion in North America alone. Some sources put the total up-to-date losses due to software crime as high as $4.7 trillion. Estimates show that over forty percent of North American software company's revenues are generated overseas, yet nearly eighty percent of the software industry's piracy losses occurred outside of North America. The Software Publishers Association (SPA) indicated that approximately thirty-five percent of the business software in North America was obtained illegally. In fact, thirty percent of the piracy occurs in corporate settings. In a corporate setting or business, every computer must have its own set of original software and the appropriate number of manuals. It is illegal for corporations or businesses to purchase a single set of original software and then load that software onto more than one computer, or lend, copy, or distribute software for any reason without the prior written consent of the software manufacturer. Many software managers are concerned with the legal compliance, along with asset management and costs to their organizations.
Information can qualify to be property in two ways: patent laws and copyright laws that are creations of federal statutes, which are subject to Constitutional authority. In order for the government to prosecute the unauthorized copying of computerized information as theft, it must first rely on other theories of information-as-property. Provincial law creates trade secret laws, and most jurisdictions have laws that criminalize the violators of a trade-secret holder's rights. The definition of a trade secret varies somewhat from province to province, but commonly have the same elements. For example, the information must be secret, not of public knowledge or of general knowledge in the trade or business.