(-) Negative Impacts

Economic losses

People who pirate do not pay for the product that they acquire. There is a potential economic loss every year to countries which do not curb online piracy, in terms of money that could have been earned and jobs that could have been created.

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Free software but there is no technical support

When you pirate, you do not have to pay for the software that you acquire. However, there is no access to customer support, upgrades, technical documentation, training, and bug fixes. There are also increased risks that the software will malfunction and there is a risk of exposure to a debilitating virus that can destroy valuable data.

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Hijack of third party servers

Pirates need places to store their ‘warez’ and thus they hijack third party servers to use as storage sites. This becomes a problem in universities where high school or college students pirating software with access to the school servers leads to campus servers being the unwitting hosts for illegal software.

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Disincentives to create

There is a possibility that creative efforts are now stifled when artists feel that they are not receiving the expected royalties due to piracy. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 85% of all recording that are released never make enough revenue to cover their costs.
More Information | Innovation A Victims ? - Popsci.com

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(+) Positive Impacts

Improvement in laws

Pirates tend to exploit existing loopholes in the security systems or laws that counter piracy, such that these systems or laws have to be constantly revised. This leads to both a continuous improvement in technology to exploit the loopholes as well as more comprehensive laws.

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Aid in the development of a country

According to Romania’s president Traian Băsescu, piracy actually set off the development of the IT industry, improved the creative capacity of Romanians in the industry and helped the young generation discover computers.

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Improve sales in the music industry

Not everyone in the music industry has complained about piracy negatively affecting sales. The internet is not only a platform for piracy of music files, but it allows greater flexibility and faster speed where music can be obtained and it is also an excellent advertising platform to attract more customers as it provides direct and interactive access to customers. The respective firms have to take a long-term approach to invest more in R&D to capitalize on the internet to give them a competitive edge. Also, music albums that have yet to be released that are leaked to file-sharing websites may, on the contrary, improve the sales of the album. Leaked albums allow fans to listen to the music first and decide to purchase the albums when they like it. In fact, 3 out of the 5 top hip-hop albums in 2008 were leaked weeks before the actual release date.

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Allows us to understand a different culture

China has pirated vast amounts of movies from the U.S., and this has provided an unprecedented exposure for young Chinese to the cultural output of the West. Without piracy as a bridge allowing the flow of Hollywood movies from the U.S. to China, it would not have opened a window into the Western world otherwise inaccessible to the insular Chinese hinterland.

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Used as a business strategy

Software giant Microsoft tries to target a larger audience by trying targeting both its legal and illegal user base. They cast a blind eye towards people pirating their software because they want their users to get used to their products, and over time, convert them to buy licensed software. More often, users who have used Microsoft’s products for a few years usually find it more difficult to adapt to other operating systems like Apple’s. As Bill Gates has mentioned, “As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
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