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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

For the past decade, if you wanted to download copyrighted material and didn 't want to pay for it, it 's likely you turned to “The Pirate Bay”. Up until a police raid it was the most popular place to grab Sunday 's episode of “MSNBC or Power” months before the Blu-ray hits stores (Seppala, 2014). You didn 't have to log in to some arcane message board or know someone to get an invite. The anonymous file-sharing site was open to everybody and made piracy as simple as a Google search. That 's what scared Hollywood.

The pervasive nature of the Internet has made the copying of music and software exceptionally easy, fast and for the most part, undetectable. The ubiquity of the Internet and the speed at which music and software can be copied is also changing the sociological and legal aspects of computing as well (De George, 2006). For the first time the availability of technology is driving a level of expertise with computer users globally that give them the opportunity to capture, distribute, duplicate and even re-publish massive amounts of intellectual property that isn't theirs (Wilson, 2007). This is forcing the issue of copyright infringement and the protection of intellectual property at a global scale. In so doing, this dynamics is also re-ordering ethics surrounding all forms of digital content as well.

Traditional legal principles and processes are constantly challenged by the need to keep pace with copyright issues in particular piracy. The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015

For many years illegal file sharing and music swapping has been going on. Two very popular cases are the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster case and the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster case. Both cases differ in many ways however they also have similarities. A lot of music and other sorts of entertainment are being distributed for free all over the internet. What some people do not think of are the consequences that will be faced if they get caught. Not only is the distributor at risk for getting caught but those of us that download the software illegally can be charged.

This paper is an analytical essay on global ethical issues on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing. A history and background of peer-to-peer file-sharing will be given, as well as how it became an issue. This paper will explore what aspects of file-sharing are ethical and at what point it becomes unethical. An explanation of the laws will be described and whether the laws different from region-to-region around the world. The paper will include personal experiences with file sharing, as well as an in-depth analysis on the topic with high-quality industry and academic references to defend a particular moral/ethical position.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit accused LimeWire of creating and running a Web service “devoted essentially” to piracy in 2006. LimeWire used peer-to-peer file sharing networking technology to allow their users easily download distribution of copyrighted songs at no cost. The LimeWire peer-to-peer client software was downloaded over 50 million times in two years since the suit was brought up and an estimated 200 million copies in total. According to this result, the RIAA claims that “LimeWire owes trillions of dollars in damages for enabling distribution of copyrighted songs”.

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.

Record companies decided to embrace the profitable possibilities of using the internet and began working on legal pay services. These sites attracted customers by offering legal downloads of individual tracks for very low prices. As a result, millions of music lovers today enjoy downloading 99 cent tracks off of online merchants such as iTunes and Amazon. The music industry is also pleased with these legal pay services, because revenue is increasing again due to the ease, cost-effectiveness, and widespread popularity of buying and selling music digitally. While Fanning’s invention caused a lot of financial damage to the music industry, it also forced them to look towards the future and contemplate how it could adapt to the emerging internet age. Unfortunately, while the recording industry does make plenty of money from legal music downloads, Fanning and his legendary website have become the model for the dozens of illegal music file-sharing sites that have emerged over the past 16 years since Napster’s launch. The educational eMagazine, SchoolVideoNews, states that, “Software such as Gnutella, Limewire, Kazaa…and other free, open-source software used to trade any type of file…have been popular networks for pirating music since Napster” (Britt). These types of companies, and their users, are constantly discovered and sued by

Often, the argument against piracy is a slightly odd one. For many people it is a simple black and white affair -- it's not yours, and if you take it without paying for it you are stealing. But for others, online piracy -- be it movies, music or software -- is not tantamount to theft. It is the ethereal, non-physical nature of these types of goods that seems to bring about confusion.

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.

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.

Such policy seems to be working with plagiarism at e.g. Universities, but in term of intellectual property the intangible aspect of the product makes it more difficult to control. Therefore stopping online piracy is easier said than done, as it would require enormous human resources from a government to track down illegal websites and taking a legal action against them leading to the closure. One case study worth following regarding this issue was on the major streaming website TV SHACK.net has been seized many times by the US government and it kept changing the domain addresses to overseas addresses as .co or .bz. The owner, 23 year old student Richard O’Dwyer from Sheffield has been charged with copyright infringement and the US Justice Department has been seeking to extradite him from the UK since May 2011 – BBC reports. Streaming itself is a grey area in many countries, i.e. Germany, where it is not perceived as downloading but has been sourced using illegal means. Compared with the legal issues and the fact that the content was stored on foreign servers the law enforcement was extremely difficult, but now it has been set an example worldwide of tackling with piracy. On entering the internet address now a video clip displays which in a humoristic educated people on what piracy is and how much a “free” movie really cost. Such attempt is one of the suggested ways in dealing with piracy through

Companies like Apple, have decided that it is best to get in with the downloading business. However, an end to the illegal downloading conflict remains to be realized. The RIAA and associated artists continue to wage war against illegal downloaders while computer savvy audiences persist in sharing music files online every day. While it is undoubtedly true that downloading music is a crime, it remains to be proven that it is wrong. Without establishing this principle, most downloader's are likely to continue the activity. Even with new, inexpensive and available means of downloading files, they can still be shared for free online. The rift must be repaired between music lovers who feel that they have been taken advantage of in the past and recording companies and artists who worry about their future livelihood.

Digital or online piracy is one of the biggest if not the biggest criminal cyber acts today. It has been a major problem for nearly two decades. Sellers of digital products (ranging from music to software) are actively fighting the availability of pirated copies of their products, but despite more sophisticated copy protection, the problem is still out there (Sundararajan 2004).