Digital Piracy Is It Really?

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

Copyright is the legal right, to an inventor to perform, print, publish, film, or record artistic, literary, or musical material, and to allow others to do the same. Copyright law was developed to provide the creators and inventors of any works with powerful and effective rights of exclusivity over their creations (Patterson & Lindberg, 1991). Over the past, these rights were almost unlimited. People would use existing developments as if they were their own without any regard of the creator’s exclusive rights. The need to balance and limit such rights arose, and governments established these limits for the general good of the public.

Darrell Panethiere wrote in “The Persistence Of Piracy” on page 2 that “'Piracy refers to the activity of manufacturing unauthorised copies ('pirate copies') of protected material and dealing with such copies by way of distribution and

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.

Australia has begun to stand in favor of censorship by banning such things. Though Australia's efforts seem noble, they're so fundamentally flawed, it only increases the negative effect on the distribution of this malicious medium. The Electronic Frontier Foundation expounds on how this primarily valid idea is poorly constructed and will further increase the adverse consequences of this time of illicit dissemination: ".. filtering does little to curb the trade of child pornography, much of which is traded across peer to peer networks and VPNs" (EFF, 3). This same concept can be applied to piracy. Piracy is prevalent on the Internet, but by forcing regulations, people will only become more devious, and the effects of this will become more widespread. Furthermore, it can be argued that piracy helps small musicians and film studios gain recognition. David Blackburn, a PhD graduate of Harvard in economics did an extensive study on the projected amount of albums sold by indie artists in correlation to their piracy rate. Blackburn discovered that albums with a higher piracy rate sold more albums than those that didn't (Blackburn 21). Furthermore, artists that were not previously pirated resulted in up to a 10% sales increase when their content started being distributed illicitly (33). There is no

Online piracy is illegal and people shouldn't be doing or even thinking of stealing something that's not yours. People need to make money in order to eat, but can't if others commit online piracy. Musicians take time in creating a song and sacrifice a lot for their song to be pushed forward in the music industries. Musicians need to eat and be able to afford their house, but can't if other people are stealing their products. Online piracy can also affect others by showing that you're stealing something that not yours and basically taking credit for it. Main point is that stealing is bad and it wouldn't get you anywhere in the world.

What this viewer’s most of the time don’t know and are not aware of is that piracy at large is a big detriment to the job economy of the United States. THE United states every losses a lot of money due to content piracy. According to diplomatic courier, “Although legal content distribution services like Netflix, Crackle, iTunes, Hulu, Amazon, Epix, and Vudu have again made accessing entertainment content legally more convenient, it is estimated that online piracy costs the U.S. economy somewhere around $250 billion per year. When content is illegally taken and distributed, income stops, jobs cannot be supported, and people are left unemployed. There is no question that content piracy has had a negative impact on everyone involved in the entertainment industry and on the overall global economy.” (Scholes)The effect that piracy leaves even if not known to the public ,it still affects the economy in a huge way and the development of the piracy of movie or online content has to be curbed to stop the loss of billions to something that could be used to better the community and country as a

There are gray areas. These gray areas, in relation to piracy, are usually made up of those who have different opinions based on the situation. I stand in the gray area. The best way to explain the gray area is through analogies. One situation to consider is if a person owns a physical copy of something but wants to use it through a different medium, so the person downloads a pirated copy. Like with Robin Hood there are two sides to consider. One, the man has already paid for the product so it isn’t really stealing. Two, while that particular person may have purchased the product the other people who downloads the product may not have purchased the product. So, is it fair to take away the availability to those who want to have the convenience of using the product on different mediums just to keep the person who did not purchase the product from being able to download it? The question can be answered anyway because it is about the individual's

Internet piracy is the unlawful reproduction and/or distribution of any copyrighted digital file that can change hands over the Internet, and can be done with music files, videos and movies, e-books, software, and other materials. Individuals who engage in this type of piracy can often conduct their entire operation on the Internet, including advertising and sales. Internet piracy has been around for many years now, but seems to be becoming more common with the availability of, and access to, the Internet. It is unclear to many individuals as to whether or not piracy on the Internet is wrong, and the question is a challenging one to answer. There are many forms of piracy on the Internet, which makes it even more difficult to distinguish between right and wrong downloading activities.

Julian Sanchez, research fellow at the Cato Institute, provides an interesting outlook on the issue of piracy, and what should be done. He compares the actions taken in the movie and television industry to prevent piracy by stating:

Even though we know that software piracy is illegal, we are aware many people still download and access this copyrighted material for their personal use on a daily basis. The following report will weigh up the arguments for and against software piracy. This will give you better knowledge and understanding in determining: Who’s right? The pirates or the government and businesses? Journals I’ve read suggest a variety of facts and opinions, of which will be included below.

Furthermore, the music and movie industries are being punched in their guts from the illegal downloading. From the introduction, a song loses five million dollars from Atlanta for just that particular song. There are hundreds of thousands of different digital products that are illegally downloaded from a city alone. Not only different products at a given time, it can be assumed that people download multiple digital products over repeating intervals throughout the years. From the different factors of piracy, the digital industries are losing billions of dollars each

The movie box office ranks movies by how much it grosses in the theater over the span of time that it is in theaters. The span of time can be by day, month, or year. However, we must first understand that when you watch, receive, or supply a pirated movie there is no money made by the production company. For instance, the movie may have been seen by five thousand people but if two thousand people view pirated copies then the number reported will be the profit brought in by the three thousand people. When you look at the numbers three thousand may seem large but when you think about a movie ticket being nine dollars you will only be making $2.7 million of the $4.5 million that the movie would have made in the theaters. The money that the movies make goes back

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) claims its industry loses $250 billion per year to piracy, along with 750,000 American jobs. Studies show, however, that consumers don’t care. A survey conducted by Irdeto, a provider of digital security technologies, confirmed that most people know piracy is illegal. Only 19%, however, said they would stop watching pirated content because of the supposed financial losses caused by

Over time, modern-day society has experienced an exponential growth in theft and dishonest behavior. Alongside the development and evolution of technology, individuals are continually strategizing criminal activity of the next generation. More specifically, cybercrime, or a crime committed via the internet or computer network, has gained popularity (Microsoft News Center, 2013). With the click of a button, individuals are able to obtain unlawful copies of software, personal information, identities, and copyrighted content. Widely recognized, software piracy has become an attractive alternative for individuals who do not wish to pay for various types of licensed software or programs. The large population and intelligence of software pirates has hindered the legal process, allowing the majority of offenders to act without retribution. As a result, software piracy has developed a reputation that is misconceived as victimless and harmless. However, the true outcome of software piracy is devastating, affecting millions of employees, businesses, and computer users across the globe (Santillanes & Felder, 2015). With the potential negative impact on the global economy, software piracy is an act of unscrupulous behavior. In fact, software piracy is not a victimless crime, as the outcome of such is absorbed by developers, merchants, and consumers around the world.