Piracy of Intellectual Property

Software is not the only intellectual property subject to computer based piracy. Other forms of copyrighted material, such as music, videos, images, articles, books and either written works are especially vulnerable to copyright infringement, which most courts have deemed illegal.

Digitized versions can easily be captured by computer systems and made available for people to access or download at Internet websites, or can be readily disseminated by e-mail as file attachments.

The development of peer to peer networking technologies like the Napster and Gnutella models have made digital versions of copyrighted material even more vulnerable to unauthorized use.

For example Napster and other similar software enable direct MP3 audio file transfer pf specified tracks of music between PC and those of other users on the Internet.

Thus such software creates a peer to peer network of millions internet users who electronically trade digital versions of copyrighted or public domain music stored on their PC’s hard drives.
Piracy of Intellectual Property