Economic Analysis Of Software Piracy

Since the 1950s,the development of computers and communication technology has promoted a new round of information technology revolution and greatly improved social productivity.Since the late 1980s,the center of the computer industry has begun to shift from hardware to software,and software and related information service industries are gradually becoming the core forces that guide future economic development.However,with the development of the software industry,piracy problems have appeared,and software manufacturers have suffered huge losses due to piracy.Repeated piracy has become a shadow of the development of the software industry.How to manage piracy has become a problem faced by the software industry,and it is also the focus of theoretical research.In this paper,the study of piracy begins with the economic characteristics of the software itself.It examines the choices of consumers in the software market under the influence of piracy,the government in combating piracy and the costs and benefits of the government,and then studies the factors that affect piracy through empirical analysis.Finally,the results of comprehensive theoretical analysis and empirical analysis reached the conclusion.Firstly,the related concepts of software and software piracy are defined.Based on the actual situation of the software market,the economic characteristics of the software are analyzed.The software market is divided from the two dimensions of software universality and development cost,and the differences in the impact of piracy in various markets are analyzed.Secondly,the two major reasons for the formation of software piracy were analyzed.First,the inherent economic characteristics of software make software naturally vulnerable to piracy.The production of software has the characteristics of high fixed cost and low marginal cost,which in turn makes the software non-exclusive of public products.Software has the characteristics of public products and is provided privately.This contradiction leads to the emergence of piracy problems.Second,the intricate interest relationships in the software market have made the management of piracy more difficult.Rational consumers need to consider the cost and utility of both genuine software and pirated software when making purchases.Anti-piracy measures can only work when it affects the net utility of consumers,but it is difficult to change consumer choices in fact.This is the difficulty of anti-piracy.The manufacturers themselves can take technical measures and legal measures to crack down on piracy,but the hitting of these two methods is limited by the cost of anti-piracy.The role of government oversight is indispensable given the limited ability of manufacturers to fight piracy.However,the government must make decisions based on the overall welfare of the society.It must not only safeguard the interests of software manufacturers,but also consider the interests of consumers.The government's supervision influences the distribution of social welfare and must balance the interests of all parties.Finally,based on the previous theoretical analysis,several factors that affect piracy were refined,and the indicators were used.The regression model of the panel data was used to analyze the factors affecting piracy.The empirical results show that the higher the consumer's income level and the stronger the sense of intellectual property rights,the more they tend to use genuine software;the increase in the protection of intellectual property rights helps to reduce the piracy rate,but in the short term the effect may not be obvious;countries with higher levels of Internet development and social development use lower rates of piracy.The causes of piracy are inherent software features and external market factors.Corresponding governance piracy also has two ideas.The first is to increase the exclusivity of software and fundamentally prevent illegal copying.This technical measure mainly relies on technological advances and the company's own anti-piracy investment.The second is from the perspective of the government,regulate the behavior of the software market,and guide the healthy development of the software industry.Regulate consumer behavior,strengthen supervision of piracy,increase the cost of using piracy,and reduce the use of piracy.Through the development of the software industry to improve the competitiveness of the industry,to avoid software vendors to develop high monopoly prices,and to guide software vendors to change the profit model.