However, the law has had to play catch-up with respect to software copyright. With the rapid increase in personal computer ownership in the 1980's and 1990's, and the introduction and major success of the world wide web over a similar time frame, software producers found they were catering for a market the size of which was unthought of in the early days of highly specialised software design in the 1960's. Whereas before, software applications were usually created specifically to run on individual machines, and for specific, often technical purposes, new applications were being designed for the modern home, and could be run and copied freely on home systems. The protection of programmer's intellectual property became increasingly important, as the internet and other forms of data transfer, and widespread cross-platform compatibility fuelled a rapidly-growing piracy endemic.
As a result, software developers took it upon themselves to include software licences in their applications, which act as contracts between the companies and end-users, stating the legal uses of the software in terms of the numbers of simultaneous installs allowed, rules regarding backup copies and covering the developers' rights to distribute the software for profit (among other conditions).
Despite international law having received vast updates with regard to software copyright, and many of the clauses included in program licenses now being unnecessary because of the changes, developers are reluctant to remove them from their releases. This is likely because the independent licence agreements can be used to give developers extra power over their software and their users, such that they may even try to give themselves privileges against the laws of their nation's constitution. These privileges may be as extreme as random search and seizure rights, but are more often subtle over-rides to normal exceptions in copyright law. The US court case of Triad Systems Corp. versus Southeastern Express Co. (1995) uncovered one such exploitation of licenses in order to impose terms in favour of the software developer, reinforcing their monopoly and making it difficult for competitors.6
Triad Systems supplied pre-built computer systems for the management of auto retail and service centres, and also maintained the systems they built. Southeastern offered similar maintenance services for Triad systems, but Triad claimed that by using the system software in their maintenance and repairs, Southeastern technicians were temporarily becoming additional unlicensed users of the systems. Thus, the technicians were in breach of the software's licence agreement, which prohibited such unlicensed use of the software. In reality, Triad otherwise had a monopoly over the maintenance of their computer systems, and wanted the profits being directed into Southeastern. This muscling out of competitors through excessive copyright control is now catered for in US law (unfair domination and monopolisation of any market has always been against US trade law), but at the time, courts ruled in favour of Triad.
The morality and ethicality of such practices can be called into question, as can the general limitations that software licenses may place on the availability of software to the less fortunate members of society.
It can be argued that the essential purpose of copyright law is to encourage creative diversity in markets of creative expression; if the original creations of any member of an artistic profession could be freely copied, modified and released as a new original work, then there would be little incentive for others to conceive of and construct new creative works - the works considered the pinnacle of the separate arts could be freely copied, and there would be no need for different artists to create competing works. Creative arts of all kinds would be greatly depressed.
Software development, being its own creative pursuit (in a practical sense, if no other), and experiencing as rapid growth and competition as any other technological market, needs copyright protection to maintain this competition and creative diversity - that which ultimately leads to the wide range of differing solutions to similar problems, and thus to those that are more or less appropriate for individual situations.
If copyright law is seen in this light, then the use of its principles to stifle competition (as in the case of Triad and Southeastern) is clearly immoral and unethical. The use of licence agreement documentation (provided with software) as a means to apply copyright law in this way can be seen to be similarly immoral, if the intention is in opposition to the interests of diversity in the software development industry.
It has also been argued that software licenses, specifically those that dictate specific numbers of users and simultaneous installs on multiple machines, are discriminatory towards the peoples of developing countries and those less fortunate in developed countries, in that they create barriers to the spread of technology amongst the world community. For example, a charity organisation wishing to provide families experiencing financial difficulties with recycled computers may be unable to provide such systems with licensed copies of operating system software, due to the prohibitive costs of purchasing a licence that would allow the virtually unlimited users that are implicit in such a project. Similarly, a developing country may be advantaged by access to computer software, but the costs of providing suitably wide-spread access to the citizens of that country are such that it is much more practical to spread software in breach of licence agreements. In both cases, the benefits for the community might be seen to outweigh the illegality of the means by which those technological benefits are gained.
