Digital Piracy And Its Impact On Society Essay

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

In the various media industries there are extreme worries concerning unauthorized downloading and copying of their products known as piracy. Piracy of items has been part of commerce for centuries; counterfeiting of currency for example. With the information age the ease at which media can be pirated has caused an explosion of this phenomenon. This practice is an illegal act that is done by individuals for personal use and also for profit. The first do not seem to see the issues caused by this practice such as; the spreading of viruses and lower quality products. We will use Reynolds' Seven-Step Ethical Decision Making Approach for the breakdown of the ethical reality of software piracy.

In the late 1990s, most homes and organizations began to receive Internet access. In correlation, many features became available to Web including the fact that files of any type could be downloaded with ease from any source quickly and often for free. The film and music industries felt that the availability of the Internet was posing a large threat to their business model. It was so easy to obtain a song or even an entire movie clip with a click of a mouse. Software and books could be had for “free” as well. It was a common misconception then that these files were available for the taking without needing to pay for it and also without any worry of penalty. In turn, many otherwise “innocent” individuals would obtain this copyrighted

Today’s digital knowledge has made it so easy to perform copyright infringement in order to create pirated movies. This in turn has increased the amount of illegal digital movie distribution. It’s so easy these days to make perfect copies and then distribute it across global networks. Torrent Freak research shows multiple copies of movies that are found online. Technology has made it more tempting than ever to violate the copyright laws without breaking a sweat. Majority of Internet users think that if it is on the Internet, it's free. But they don’t realize that even public display of someone’s work without proper permission is considered Copyright infringement. Displaying it on a website, putting it on film or transmitting it to the public in any other way are all examples of how movies are facing piracy issues daily. In spite of that piracy continues to grow at an exponential speed. Moreover, movies that deal with copyright infringement has grown over the years.

The Global music industry makes around $43.9 billion dollars a year. $12.5 billion of that is lost each year due to Piracy in the music industry and 70% of online users find nothing wrong with online piracy (“Music’s Last Decade: Sales Cut in Half”). Is it wrong? Is music piracy stealing? This topic is said to have inspired Charles W. Moore to illustrate these points in his essay. Charles W. Moore writes the essay “Is Music Piracy Stealing?” and tries to answer his own question. Moore starts off by explaining that current day pirates simply do not care about copyright laws. He goes into detail about the philosophy, ethics, and morality of the threat to the free exchange of music over the Internet. Moore says, “Digital copywriting is as serious and criminal as stealing a CD from a record shop or a DVD from a video shop” (242). The subject on piracy is a controversial and an argumentative subject. Although Moore gives many great examples throughout his essay, he also has some faulty reasoning such as the root question of his argument is not provable, his factual data is excessive, he has lousy introduction and closing paragraphs, and his views are biased.

There are many forms of digital content. All of them can be stolen and this is illegal as is any other form of stealing. Digital piracy is the sharing and downloading digital content illegally. The problem with digital piracy has been around for over 20 years, however due to many factors such as the recession and the increasing development of technology the problem is becoming increasing difficult to manage (QUIGLEY, 2008). However the ability to buy the content online has boosted the profit for many creators of digital content.

Economically, $12.5 billion in losses each year is due to piracy in the music industry, $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings are lost each year due to online piracy and almost 71,000 jobs are lost in the United States every year due to online piracy as well. It may seem that these numbers are horrifying, but one statistic proves otherwise. In the statistics for the highest and lowest piracy rates in 2010, the United States comes up the very top of the lowest piracy percentage, only accounting for 20% of media downloaded from the Internet. Most consumers in the U.S. obtain their media legally because they support their artists. They realize that artists are also people working and making their craft just like everyone else. Consumers may download the songs illegally, but if they really loved the album, they would buy the real deal.

This paper provides an interdisciplinary perspective to describing the underlying motivation for researching the thought-provoking construct of piracy which is at the heart of the proposed research question. The document is organized into a four sections: 1) research motivation; 2) research question based on literature gap; 3) interdisciplinary insights on piracy; and 4) conclusion providing reflection and insights of take-always from an interdisciplinary perspective.

The internet is an unregulated and chaotic environment that is only loosely governed by social norms that have been established by the more well-respected users leading the rest over many years. The anonymity of these billions of users allows them to break these rules and conventions with little risk of negative consequence. One of the biggest problems that stems from this is the pirating of media. Internet pirates will make media such as movies, television shows, and music available on websites such as The Pirate Bay, where users can download this content this free. This system takes money away from creators and designers and gives it to the advertisers on pirating websites.

Diverse perspectives flood the market on the subject, ranging from the harsh accusation of legal precedent, to the methodical dissection and theoretical solution. Sebastian Anthony, author of the article “A Case for Piracy” being a prime example. Falling back on the philosophy of “No harm, no foul,” Anthony fends off the allegations of wrong piracy. Questioning the

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

We all know that downloading pirated music and films is illegal, but what exactly is it? The term piracy refers to the copying and selling of music, films and other media illegally; in other words you are copying and selling copyrighted media without the permission of the original owner (NiDirect, n.d.). With the massive growth of the internet and its ability to store and capture vast amounts of data, we have become much more reliable on information systems in all aspects of life, but it does not come without the risk of information technology being used unethically. With the number of IT breakthroughs in recent years “the importance of ethics and human values has been underemphasised” often resulting in various consequences. Not surprisingly one of the many public concerns about the ethical use of IT is that “millions of people have downloaded music and movies at no charge and in apparent violation of copyright laws at tremendous expense to the owners of those copyrights” (Reynolds, Ethics in Information Technology, 2015). This essay covers the ethical issues of downloading pirated music and films and the impact it has on music corporations and recording and film companies.

In our present day in age, technology and the internet has made it very easy to find and obtain music, movies, television shows, and other media forms without having to pay a fee. In recent years, the music and movie industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) initiated a campaign to combat the illegal sharing and downloading of files, songs, and movies. These illegal files are usually transferred through users and peer-to-peer networks including LimeWire, FrostWire, Bearshare, Kazaa, and most importantly Napster, which initiated it all. The illegal files are not only limited to music and movies but also various types of pirated software, such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, that are accompanied with serial numbers and instructional manuals. The RIAA and MPAA argued that if an individual exerts much time, effort, and money into a piece of art or software that they created, they should be thoroughly compensated. Therefore, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was created and instituted by the United States Congress to restrict internet piracy by banning the fabrication, allocation, and illegal distribution of pirated materials. In addition, the DMCA was used to accommodate the constant changes of the growing digital age into current copyright laws that are usually reserved for books, magazines, or articles. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is just and protects the rights of the artists and

This report studies the impact piracy has on society and how it is developing with technology. It also highlights the positive and negative economic factors along with the ethical influences, which the law aspect of software piracy has also been integrated. This report helps to understand how the conflict with

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This