CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1       INTRODUCTION
Software piracy has affected the growth and the profitability of the software industry. It causes so much harm to software publishers when their products are duplicated without due authorization and spread across to individuals who are not licensed users or when their products are installed amongst multiple machines beyond the licensed number. Nowadays, we are surrounded by software applications which are used for services like online payments, social networking, games, data management, etc. The profitability of the producers and vendors of these software applications are negatively affected by threats such as piracy, reverse engineering, and tampering. However, these threats are exacerbated when these software are poorly protected. Therefore, it is important to have a thorough threat analysis as well as software protection schemes in order to protect the huge revenues of software companies which increases in proportion with the wide use of software. This protection is not only for operating systems, but also for professional applications (e.g. graphics software) which can also be very expensive. The illegal use of software is on the increase and with just a few mouse clicks, people can download software product, apply a downloaded patch to it, and start using it without payment. Vendors realized that protecting software against malicious users is a hard problem. The user is in control of his machine: he has physical access to the hardware and he controls the network connectivity (Howard & LeBlanc, 2002). The BSA (2013) explained that software piracy creates unfair competition for legitimate companies, damages brands through distribution of substandard products, and exposes customers to a range of IT risks including malware, security breaches and data loss. It also denies end-users the benefit of necessary customer support, upgrades, technical documentation, trainings and bug fixes. These pirated software end-users of course have no warranty to protect themselves and they are subject to significant fines for copyright infringement. The software vendors and manufacturers and also the BSA with local laws in different countries have not relented in the quest to completely prevent software piracy. Many websites today are used to fight piracy by including linking information such as “report software piracy”, thereby involving legitimate users of software in the fight. Software piracy is more often practised when digital files are made into one or more copies, thus programmers have usually come together trying to find a way of making digital files uncopyable. Schneier (2011) has said that trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. Job (2011) has also argued that there is no good technological solution to a behavioural problem. While so many are still on the fight for piracy prevention, some others are arguing that software piracy prevention has no perfect measure. According to wheeler (2011), a combination of four main factors means that no imperfect copy-protection system can be possibly safe. In the light of his “four major factors”, he said the question shouldn’t be “Why are software still easily pirated?”, but “Why are people still trying to prevent it?”. So many others do believe that piracy can be tackled with a combination of measures. A decision to totally relent on the fight to prevent software piracy is like a decision to cease software production all over the world and its impact will be unimaginable.
1.2 RATIONAL/THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The increase in demand of software products should no doubt increase the revenue of the Software vendors and create more jobs for software developers. The Application of software programs have become very popular that any task has software relating to it (Adu, 2013). But unfortunately, it has been the reverse that software developers lose their jobs and that the profitability of software vendors tends to suffer over the years. Yet, there is very large number of students graduating annually throughout the world from the study of software engineering and other related fields, while so many others are gaining admission to study and so many others having the passion for software engineering and related fields. Software Piracy is a dangerous menace that needs to be combated now in order to secure the future of this population of future software engineers. Software vendors have tried a lot to prevent software piracy through means that are visible to the users. This study of combating software piracy with mobile agent is very necessary because of its verification and authentication processes being hidden from the various users of software during installation.