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According to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, Article 1, Sec. 8, Clause 8: “The Congress shall have Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Tımes to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” (LLI) Among those “useful Arts” is computer software licensed by companies like Adobe, McAfee, Microsoft, and Symantec. Further protections are granted under 17 U.S.C. §504, the Federal civil penalties for the recovery of actual damages and profits made from the non-compliance based on the actual number of copies produced. Additionally, unless a company can prove otherwise, the assumption is that the infringement was willful and therefore penalties of up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringement may be granted. Furthermore, the costs can also include the recovery of attorneys’ fees under 17 U.S.C. §505. (Copyright.gov)
Why is this important? Using Pennsylvania as an example, in 2002 software piracy cost the state economy more than 4,100 jobs, over $195 million in wages and salaries, over $193 million in retail sales, and approximately $51 million in total tax losses.  In total, software piracy cost the state of Pennsylvania over $439 million in losses in just one year.

In fact, in 2006, 35% of all the software loaded on personal computers worldwide were not associated with legal licenses. That means the software developers‘ loss equals nearly $40 billion globally due to software piracy in just one year!

Is it any wonder that software companies join organizations like Business Software Alliance (BSA) to protect their interests? BSA investigates leads of software license copyright violations. That is bad news for companies like MD of PC, based in Coraopolis, PA, which recently agreed to a $36,000 settlement in a judgment with the Federal District Court in the Western District of Pennsylvania for selling unlicensed software. In another recent software piracy case, two brothers in Florida - Maurice and Thomas Robberson - received collective sentences of 66 months in federal prison for selling more than $6 million of illegal software.

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