PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE PROTECTION AND COPYRIGHT ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Software occupies a pride of place in the development of information technology systems. Programming management must therefore safeguard the creative efforts a~d investment of resources represented by proprietary software. lnlmtcal. to .software development are the activities of pirates and hackers who copy and reproduce software at the expense of those who laboured to write them and to the detriment of the users. The research has been able to identify three rnaior types of attacks among others on the intellectual property contained in software. These are reverse engineering, software piracy and tampering. The aim is to elucidate and provide technical and legal counter measures against these attacks while also advocating the embracement of the 'open-source software' alternative. In order to evaluate the impact of piracy on users and development in information technology, questionnaires were distributed. Responses were analyzed using chi square distribution between .01 and .05 level. The results of the analysis showed that the use of pirated software is responsible for some of the problems encountered by users of computers and other IT systems. A software system christened "PROGRAMTESTER" has also been developed and implemented using VisualBasic VI as an aid to establishing copyright infringements.