As computers develop faster and faster nowadays, more and more people are beginning to pay attention to the importance of intellectual property of software.

Pirated software copies can be seen almost everywhere, and they are stealing the intellectual property. In my home country, China, many people are doing piracy there. The main reason for piracy is that the prices of original software are too expensive for most people to buy. However, the pirated copies are usually 5% of the original ones. For example, Microsoft Windows XP cost a person about one month pay in China, while he was extremely interested in this new operating system, and in such a situation, the only method for him to get it was to buy copies because he couldn’t spend all his monthly income on a software. Compared with Chinese people, Canadians are more willing to buy original software because the prices of software here are more reasonable than those in China and people here have larger salaries. The Chinese market, however, is being pushed into a vicious circle, software company will begin to quit the Chinese market because of this piracy; then the prices will become much higher. This will make Chinese people to buy more pirated copies.

Piracy must be forbidden in order to protect the intellectual property. Software is the creation from people’s mind, it includes the author’s hard work and creative ideas, and they are personal belongings. For instance, if anyone can get pirated copies without giving credits, as a consequence, I think everyone will sit at home and wait for others’ creativities, so no body will create new software any more. It obviously would be a nightmare of the development of computers. In my opinion, everyone knows the importance of intellectual property, but many people are not able to make a right decision resulting from the high prices.

Some measures must be done to protect intellectual property. Everyone is willing to buy original software but sometimes they have no choice because of the high prices. I think the prices should shift depending on the market. For example, the prices might be reduced in developing countries so that more people such as me are able to buy their favorite software. Additionally, the reductions in the prices will beat the piracy because original software contain more services such as free updates, technical support and even a better packing.

In a word, protecting intellectual property has no time to delay. In my opinion, how to improve people’s awareness is the most important but the most difficult thing to do. Piracy is possible to be stopped only if nobody buys the pirated copies.