US / AR and Software Piracy

[Argentina2010]

I was asked to help research the cultural differences between the US versus AR with respect to software piracy. The attitudes, thoughts, ease of piracy, restriction and laws that are, or are not, enforced, views on intellectual property, corruption and how it ties into it, and maybe the hierarchy of needs or priorities of people.

I was given some keen insight, but any thoughts bloggers?

[Schmoj]

I was asked to help research the cultural differences between the US versus AR with respect to software piracy. The attitudes, thoughts, ease of piracy, restriction and laws that are, or are not, enforced, views on intellectual property, corruption and how it ties into it, and maybe the hierarchy of needs or priorities of people.

I was given some keen insight, but any thoughts bloggers?Working in Argentina for a software company, I can tell you that the attitude isn't any different than in the US, at least in terms of pirating software / music / etc. From the internet. Piratebay knows no international boundries (except when determining where to relocate their servers)

On the other hand, there is definitely more pirating of everything on the street. DVDs, CDs, and I am sure software (though I personally have never partaken) There must be laws on the books against all of the above, but they are never enforced.

If you REALLY want to do some research on piracy take a trip to Ciudad del Este. I saw an article about CdE a while back that was very interesting. I'll try to dig it up.

That's an interesting question about attitudes on intellectual property. I'll ask around and see what I find out.

Regarding needs / priorities, it's all about not having to pay for something that one may need / want.

Just my thoughts. I'm sure I didn't tell you anything you didn't already know.

[Daddy Rulz]

Even trying to explain what a legally licensed copy of software is will be met with blank stares.

[El Queso]

Working in Argentina for a software company, I can tell you that the attitude isn't any different than in the US, at least in terms of pirating software / music / etc. From the internet. Piratebay knows no international boundries (except when determining where to relocate their servers)Although PirateBay and others do indeed make it easier to priate, I can't agree with your statement about that being an equalizer that makes here no different from the States. I run a software company, using programmers here, and buy the licenses for my programmers for the tools we use. They work out of their homes as contractors, and I know they have illegal copies of just about everything else on their machines. Not too different from the US, I know, in many cases at least with personal or contractor computers.


Even trying to explain what a legally licensed copy of software is will be met with blank stares.I think DR has it a little closer to the attitude here.

Case in point:

One of my wife's cousins lives with as a maid, and uses her salary to go to schhol to learn computer operation. It's a basic level course. They are finishing up this week after 4 months of study. The internet was the last item to study.

Today she came home and told us what she did. They learned how to go to a peer-to-peer network, using a freely downloadable app that can tie into the various services. They were taught how to download pirated music and applications from the peer-to-peer networks.

The cousin objected, telling them downloading the files is stealing. The instructor shrugged and said "the software's avalable for free from these services and you can take advantage of it."

I mean, at least in many places in the world, although pirating goes on, it is frowned about and completely discouraged in schools. Here, they teach you how to do it.

This is a factual discussion, and does not include the "softer" side of the pirating here, which is mostly driven by the poverty and even those who make good salaries here (not giant ones) can't afford to buy very much of the bigger applications required to do things on the computer beyond email and surfing.

Why they don't push Open Office and other open-source software, though, instead of stealing, is something that negates a lot of the "softer side" excuses.