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DEVELOPMENT OF A MOBILE AGENT FOR PREVENTING SOFTWARE PIRACY
ON A NETWORK
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Software piracy has affected the growth and the profitability
of the software industry. It causes so much harm to software publishers when
their products are duplicated without due authorization and spread across to
individuals who are not licensed users or when their products are installed
amongst multiple machines beyond the licensed number. Nowadays, we are
surrounded by software applications which are used for services like online
payments, social networking, games, data management, etc. The profitability of
the producers and vendors of these software applications are negatively
affected by threats such as piracy, reverse engineering, and tampering.
However, these threats are exacerbated when these software are poorly
protected. Therefore, it is important to have a thorough threat analysis as
well as software protection schemes in order to protect the huge revenues of
software companies which increases in proportion with the wide use of software.
This protection is not only for operating systems, but also for professional
applications (e.g. graphics software) which can also be very expensive. The
illegal use of software is on the increase and with just a few mouse clicks,
people can download software product, apply
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a downloaded patch to it, and start using it without payment.
Vendors realized that protecting software against malicious users is a hard
problem. The user is in control of his machine: he has physical access to the
hardware and he controls the network connectivity (Howard & LeBlanc, 2002).
The BSA (2013) explained that software piracy creates unfair competition for
legitimate companies, damages brands through distribution of substandard
products, and exposes customers to a range of IT risks including malware,
security breaches and data loss. It also denies end-users the benefit of
necessary customer support, upgrades, technical documentation, trainings and
bug fixes. These pirated software end-users of course have no warranty to
protect themselves and they are subject to significant fines for copyright
infringement. The software vendors and manufacturers and also the BSA with
local laws in different countries have not relented in the quest to completely
prevent software piracy. Many websites today are used to fight piracy by
including linking information such as “report software piracy”, thereby
involving legitimate users of software in the fight. Software piracy is more
often practised when digital files are made into one or more copies, thus
programmers have usually come together trying to find a way of making digital
files uncopyable. Schneier (2011) has said that trying to make digital files
uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. Job (2011) has also argued
that there is no good technological solution to a behavioural problem. While so
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many are still on the fight for piracy prevention, some
others are arguing that software piracy prevention has no perfect measure.
According to wheeler (2011), a combination of four main factors means that no
imperfect copy-protection system can be possibly safe. In the light of his
“four major factors”, he said the question shouldn’t be “Why are software still
easily pirated?”, but “Why are people still trying to prevent it?”. So many
others do believe that piracy can be tackled with a combination of measures. A
decision to totally relent on the fight to prevent software piracy is like a
decision to cease software production all over the world and its impact will be
unimaginable.
1.2 RATIONAL/THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The increase in demand of software products should no doubt
increase the revenue of the Software vendors and create more jobs for software
developers. The Application of software programs have become very popular that
any task has software relating to it (Adu, 2013). But unfortunately, it has
been the reverse that software developers lose their jobs and that the
profitability of software vendors tends to suffer over the years. Yet, there is
very large number of students graduating annually throughout the world from the
study of software engineering and other related fields, while so many others
are gaining admission to study and so many others having the passion for
software engineering
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and related fields. Software Piracy is a dangerous menace
that needs to be combated now in order to secure the future of this population
of future software engineers. Software vendors have tried a lot to prevent
software piracy through means that are visible to the users. This study of
combating software piracy with mobile agent is very necessary because of its
verification and authentication processes being hidden from the various users
of software during installation.
1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The problems of software piracy are its negative effects on
the following areas:
• Funding of
continuing research and development efforts
through sales of software
Software developers and vendors have envisioned a future with
so many possibilities through creation of various software products. Mathworks
(2013) stated their goal to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation,
development, and learning in engineering and science through the software they
create. To this end, making substantial and continuing research and development
efforts, which are ‘funded’ through the sales of their software products.
• Loss of jobs
4
Unfortunately today, throughout the world, we do not only
have a problem of software piracy reducing this funding of ongoing development
efforts, but also a problem that software vendors have not really achieved the
desired much in their quest to prevent this dangerous menace which affects
their profitability and which also is a threat to jobs of so many software
developers.
• Financial
losses to software firms and the government
The BSA study concluded that software piracy cost the U.S
economy $1.9 billion and resulted in more than 105,000 lost jobs (Jack, 2004).
At global level, the global piracy rate hovered at 42% in 2011 while a steady
expanding marketplace in the developing world drove the commercial value of
software theft to $63.4 billion (BSA, 2011). Apple (2013) also stated that more
than $11 billion is lost to piracy every year. Software piracy has also been a
discouragement to so many who wishes to invest in the software industry thus
affecting the expected alternative software solutions to solve people’s needs
in the future. If enough strict software piracy–prevention measures are not put
in place, it could lead to a very high increase in software prices in the
future because of the need for business sustainability on the side of software
vendors.
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1.4 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This study is aimed towards achieving the following results:
• Using the
migration behaviour of mobile agent codes for software-user identity collection
and for software usage count. And also to implement a scenario illustrating
such mobile agent code activities.
• Combining an
online activation code system with the mobile agent system in a way as to make
them a single unit aimed at preventing software piracy through technical means.
• Building a web
interface which will act as the data processing element for the combined
system.
• Ensuring that
an unforeseen circumstance that may arise after the users’ first time
installation of software is put into consideration.
• In addition,
using data collection procedures to ensure that the study has an outstanding
contribution to make towards the fight against software piracy, but first
ensuring that data analysed is from a population ‘really informed’ about
software piracy.
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1.5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES
Would it be that software users are not educated about
software piracy or does it mean it still appeals to them ethically to still
engage in software piracy even when they are educated enough about software
piracy and its effect on the world economy. Would it not be appropriate for
software vendors to work very hard in order to safeguard their products even if
it affects the time they should have put in the development of new products or
enhancing available ones for a better users’ experience? Most software products
initially come with some features with the inclusion of more features gradually
over time in the name of release of new versions of the same product. This
indeed is more revenue for the software vendors but causes regular budgeting
for software costs by users. The following questions could thus arise: Are
these frequent new releases strategies for making more money by the vendors,
maybe to make up for losses caused due to software piracy? Did these frequent
needs for users to pay and upgrade to newer versions lead to or encouraged more
piracy? Is it that the users of pirated software are not having in mind the
profitability and business sustenance of the vendors who claims to have the
needs of their clients in mind? Is there an expected end to software piracy?
Finally and more importantly, is
7
technology really needed to combat software piracy and how
has technology applied in the past able to fight piracy.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The proposed study has Educational, Technological and
Economic significance. It is of educational significance to students, IT instructors
and lecturers in IT field who can use the study as instructional reference for
self study and tutorials when referring to software, piracy, coding and also to
ICT-driven services. It is also of educational significance to researchers in
areas of software piracy as a review study. Technologically, it is of
significance to software developers who engage in seeking new systems of
preventing software piracy through technical means especially means relating to
mobile agents or a combination of mobile agents. The study will also be useful
technologically and economically to software vendors who has need to identify
usage and control installation limits of software as a way of frustrating
piracy and preventing financial losses.
1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
One shortcoming of this study is based on the fact that the
software installer will encapsulate both the mobile agent and the
8
actual software which altogether forms a single unit that is
copied to a CD or uploaded to the vendor’s site, maybe as a single .php file.
Only a few professional programmers though can de-encapsulate this unit to
separate the component and run the actual software independently, though he
will need to do that faster if he knows the algorithm used for the
encapsulation. Therefore, this information should never be provided by the
vendor as a way of overcoming this shortcoming. Also the amount of time that
will be required for this de-encapsulation can discourage the pirate. If the
programmer-user eventually succeeds in de-encapsulating the various components,
he can spread the actual software to non-programmer users and the spread
continues from there. Another limitation is the TUSRUC feature of the mobile
agent system which is though designed to make up for unforeseen contingencies
on the side of the users. The feature ensures that even if the software is made
to be installed on many computers, after the first installation, the
software/serial key combination enters a TUSRUC period which must elapse before
the software can be installed on the rest of the computers.
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1.8 SCOPE/DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This study is focus on preventing software piracy through
technology. This technology is the use of a mobile agent. The study will cover
the encapsulation of the actual software with mobile agent codes. It shall also
cover the coding and the development of the remote server/web interface. The
interaction between the mobile agent codes and a remote server hosted on the
site of the vendor during the authentication stage of the software installation
will also be covered. TUSRUC algorithm function will also be studied which
shows the way the system handles cases of unforeseen contingencies during the
“first time” period of using the software product. This study however, does not
cover the de-encapsulation process. The actual software to be installed will
only serve as test software, its development process or coding will not be
covered.
1.9 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF THE TERMS
-Activation Code: Some software needs an activation code to
unlock it for use. Without activation code, such software cannot be functional
(Bahar Reuben, 2011).
-Algorithm: A step-by-step method of solving a problem or
achieving
a task.
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