Question

Has protection for proprietary software gone too far, as some critics suggest? (b) If not, why? (c) If so, what are the implications for innovation and competition in the computer industry? (d) How can we achieve an appropriate balance between those who hold legal rights to proprietary information and ordinary users who wish to access, share, and communicate that information? Defend your answer. Please elaborate (beyond a yes or no answer) and provide your “theoretical” rationale in support of your responses. (knowledge)

Answer 1

I do agree with some critics that protection for proprietary has gone too far. As software manufacturers claims that they have lost millions of dollars of potential revenue because of software piracy in developing countries. In fact, most users living in developing countries could not afford to pay the prices set by many software companies so the companies have not lost any real revenues because their expensive software basically would not sell on the open market in most developing countries. If so, the implications for innovation and competition in the computer industry are limited because of limited using people. Just only copyright holder and the people have ability to afford to pay for the expensive software have right to use it, as the result, the competition is limited and weak following by slowly innovation.

         To achieve an appropriate balance between those who hold legal rights to proprietary information and ordinary users who wish to access, share, and communicate that information, We need to apply two doctrines: fair use and first sale.

         Fair use states that every author or publisher have right to make limited use of another person's copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news, reporting, teaching, scholarship,, thereby restricting the total control that the copyright holder would otherwise enjoy. Fair use is very important to the computer industry and to engineering also because it supports the practice of "reverse engineering", allowing someone to buy a product for the purpose of taking part to see how it work. Because of reverse engineering, competitors can see how it works and overlap these functions of products then make innovation.

          First sale applies once the original work has been sold out for the first time, at which point the original owner loses rights over the work of act.

   Innovators and competitors have recently depended on the use of reverse engineering, which has been protected by the copyright Act's fair-use doctrine.