Software Piracy is an intellectual property related crime related to illegal copying, distribution, or use of software that is not licensed for use by the installer and violating the EULA or underlying licensing agreement between software publisher and user. It may include use of a software unauthorizedly without obtaining a proper license from the software company or simultaneous use of single user license or loading software on more machines, than authorized under the license terms. Software Piracy includes Counterfeiting, Internet Piracy, End-User Piracy, Client-Server Overuse and Hard-Disk Loading
Software piracy is a crime
under two or three different laws in India:
· The Copyright Act, 1957 - Copyright protection
for software with an individual author lasts for the duration of the author's
life and continues 60 years after the author's death. Under the Indian
Copyright Act, a software pirate can be tried under both civil and criminal
law. The minimum jail term for software copyright infringement is seven days,
and the maximum jail term is three years. Statutory fines range from a minimum
of 50,000 to a maximum of 200,000 rupees.
·
Section 120B read with Section 420 of the
Information Technology Act, 2000, The Information Technology Act provides for
punishment with up to 3 years of imprisonment and fines up to Rs 2 lakhs for
illegal online distribution of copyrighted content.
·
Sections 468 and 471 of Indian Penal Code
