In the 1950s, when computer programs first began to be used in the scientific community, software copyright issues were ignored (Samuelson 1993). Computer programs were often developed by one researcher and then further improved or extended by others in the same field. Afterwards, as personal computers began to be widely used by the general public, commercial developers began to create computer programs to meet the increasing demands of the software market. Commercial developers invest a lot of resources in new computer software but such software is relatively easy to copy (that is, to steal). The protection of ownership of software rights has therefore become an important issue. ‘‘Software piracy’’ can be defined as the unauthorised use of computer software or the unauthorised distribution of copies of software without permission being given by the owner (BSA 2002). More than US$10.97 billion was lost worldwide in 2001 due to software piracy (BSA 2002). However, the situation had improved in 2001, as compared with 2000. The revenue loss of the worldwide software industry due to software piracy amounted to S$10.97 billion in 2001, a 6.7% decrease from 2000 (BSA 2002). However, taking into consideration the global reduction of software prices, the software piracy problem was still a very significant problem for the software industry. In the Asia-Pacific region, the average piracy rate was 54% in 2001, meaning that 54% of all software used in the region was pirated software. However, an interesting picture appears in the statistics provided by BSA (2002). Table 1 shows that, the piracy rates of some developed countries in the region in 2001 were relatively low, such as Australia (27%), New Zealand (25%) and Japan (37%). But in other (developing) countries, such as China and Vietnam, the piracy rates were more than 90%. In mainland China for example, 92% of the software installed during 2001 was pirated (see Table 1). This resulted in an estimated loss to the copyright owners of US$1.66 billion (BSA 2002).