Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 10

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015? Write a short (blogged) predictive analysis

In five years I believe is not going to be much change in the landscape of software licensing. There are always going to be people who want to earn money and others who are in favor of free sharing. I can not imagine that there will be a program, license system or some other way of controlling the software sharing, which would satisfy everyone.

Probably the software selling companies are trying to think of new more effective ways of protecting their software or maybe more strict rules are put on the sharing of software. At the same time, the network of people using, downloading and sharing software online is growing in a pace which is very hard to follow. And of course there are still those companies or people who intentionally and collectively develop freeware for free use for everyone.

Maybe there will be more strict online rules and laws made, which establish the rights and wrongs in the Internet, Then there should be some more efficient control systems made, which have more control over what is going on in the internet. In this case the pirating is made harder and the punishments made stricter so that no one wanted to brake the laws. Then there will be companies who sell their software, maybe use vendor lock-in strategy or some perks perhaps to keep their loyal customers. There will probably still be companies which produce freeware for non-commercial purposes. The whole system would be more under control.

Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.

If I think about copying restrictions and whether they are useful and for whom, I try to think from two different point of views. I am a little hypocritical about this thing.

If I think of myself as a creator or maybe an investor of a great new software, to which I have spent a lot of time or money to develop, I would like to earn something from it. It would certainly not feel good if the product I made would be used, copied and shared without me getting nothing of it. I would like there to be copying restrictions on my software.

In the other hand I am never very keen on paying for any software. I always try to get them somewhere for free or use an alternative freeware. Therefore I understand the users who are against the copying restrictions and would rather get the software for free from the internet as they are used to get everything else free from there.

Exeptions of copying restrictions should be made for educational purposes. Software which would help children to read or students to do their homework or people to get through their financial difficulties for example should be more easily retrievable. Sometimes companies should do so called 'pro bono' work in order to do good to people who are in a more vulnerable situation. Of course in this case there should be a system of control over the purposes the software is used for in order to prevent commercial use of the product.