Internet Piracy And Its Effect On Our Society

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

Criminals guilty of piracy may be sentenced up to 5 years in prison and fined up to 250,000 dollars. Crimes such as piracy are very serious, as well as the punishments. Businesses who promote and commit piracy and other similar need to be prosecuted, and organizations should do everything they can to win legal battles. Because businesses who steal media promote piracy and creators of the media are losing potential money, it is appropriate for organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America to use charged language like "piracy" to win legal battles.

I believe that people should be charged with online piracy because their stealing someone's work, who dedicated their time and effort in creating their product. We need to stop online piracy to benefit not only the companies that are being stolen from, but to benefit the economy. Online piracy affects everyone and it needs to be stopped. While you may think that you're saving money, actually just hurting and worsening your country's economy.

The internet is like an ocean brimmed with information (figuratively and literally if you count all the gigantic cables buried on the sea bed). Like any good ocean, it’s vast, large, and expansive; far from what our eyes can see. It’s a place of wonder and amazement, a place that triggers one’s urge to explore, to discover, and ultimately to conquer (if you’re Comcast). The Golden Age of Piracy is easily relatable for netizens, the romanticism found in traversing the never ending sea, unencumbered from governments, laws and principles, while harboring all sort of individuals with diverse interest, value and taste. The internet is the last place with true freedom in a world that is becoming progressively more restricted. Net neutrality is the

Peter Singer suggests based on the article that it may be morally right to pirate under certain circumstances.

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.

Should people be penalized for downloading an unauthorized copy of a song or a movie? As the era of technology has progressed, Internet advances have allowed peer-to-peer sharing between people around the world possible. This peer-to-peer sharing has manifested the debate of copyright infringement, and many CEO’s of major Internet companies have been convicted for copyright infringement. Although peer-to-peer sharing has allowed direct access to songs, movies and TV shows, it has also had several repercussions on copyright holders. Peer-to-peer sharing websites should cease to exist as they commercially damage copyright holders, steal exclusive rights without authorization, and allow unknown sources to copy information on personal computer data.

Digital music piracy has been a worry of the music industry since the creation of Napster in 1998. Piracy is the act of stealing something that does not belong to you which has been outlined in our society as something that is bad or against the law. There are many articles out there that highlight music piracy but four main important ones include: “The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era” by Jelle Janssens, “Neutralizing Music Piracy: An Empirical Examination” by Jason R. Ingram, “The Impact of Digital Piracy on Music Sales: A Cross-Country Analysis” by Mark T. Bender, “Charismatic Code, Social Norms, and the Emergence of Cooperation on the File-Swapping Networks” by Lior Jacob Strahilevitz and many other

How can traditional (or old media) enterprises such as film, television and music overcome the threat of online piracy and file sharing?

In 2013, game development company, Greenheart Games, released their game, Game Dev Tycoon, alongside a cracked version of it “on the number one torrent sharing site.” This revealed that within a day of the game release, 93.6% of users playing their game were using the cracked version that they uploaded” (Klug). These stats are terrifying when trying to make a successful business on a digital platform. Seeing that a majority of industries make some revenue off the internet, piracy is something that must decrease in order for more businesses to make a profit on this relatively new platform. Piracy has been a concern for much longer than the internet as “[i]nventions such as the photocopier, CD burners, and the Internet has made the copying of books, music, and movies inexpensive and easy and the enforcement of copyright more difficult” (Adermon). This has only increased due to the accessibility of the internet. In order to decrease piracy, one must first understand why it happens in the first place. The main reasons for people to resort to piracy rather than the legitimate acquisition of products is that piracy is free, piracy is more convenient, and piracy is anonymous. There are many ways to try to counteract these positives of pirating, but with such a large number of pirated digital goods, how is it even possible to lower the effects of piracy?

The United States of America is a free country, then why shouldn’t the internet be free? Why should we have restrictions placed on what we can and cannot do on the internet? Every day, millions of users share files on the internet through numerous online sources. Whether they download music, movies, or software, online file-sharing can give people access to a plentiful amount of information. These files are often free and easily accessible by anyone. The practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information represents file sharing (Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing and Copyright Infringement: Are You Vulnerable?). Conversely many people see file sharing as unlawful. The reproduction or distribution of any copyrighted

The internet is one of the few things in the world that is truly all over the world. Millions use the internet every day for more reasons than one person can think of; to connect with family and friends, find information for a research paper, or to achieve the perfect chicken masala recipe. The internet is made up of a mass expanse of web content and copyright, which is where online piracy comes in. Online piracy is the illegal use or distribution of copyrighted content, such as music, films, and can even include pharmaceuticals. Millions of dollars are ripped off every year from the illegal downloading of just music. In the visual that I have included you will see that America tops the list of music illegally downloaded from

Software piracy is said to be so profitable in many countries, especially in China. It is even said that organized criminal groups use the proceeds from software piracy to pay for terrorist actions overseas (Software Piracy Problem in China). In 2013, a Chinese national was sentenced to prison in the U.S. for selling more than $100 million worth of pirated software from American companies, including Agilent Technologies, Inc. from his home in China (Feeley).

Piracy is a form of theft. Specifically, it refers to the unauthorized copying or use of intellectual property. Intellectual property is knowledge or expression that is owned by someone. There are three major types of intellectual property: 1) creative works, including music, written material, movies, and software, which are protected by copyright law; 2) inventions, which are protected by patent law; and 3) brand-name products, which are protected by trademarks. Many of the issues surrounding piracy have to do with the difference between intellectual property and physical property. A CD, for example, is a piece of physical property, but the songs on the CD are intellectual property. A customer in a record store can purchase a CD, but

According to the Motion Pictures Association of America website, A pirate is anyone who sells, acquires, copies or distributes copyrighted materials without permission. Over the past ten years, technology has greatly advanced, and with these technological advances, digital file sharing easier than ever. One aspect of these advances is faster Internet connection, which has made it easier to download large files in the matter of minutes. Whereas in the past majority of people had dial-up Internet services which in most cases the download rate was no more than 10 kilobytes per second. Some Internet providers today offer speeds up to one gigabyte per second, which to put in perspective; a DVD size is usually around 4 gigabytes, so technically someone could download an exact replica of a DVD in a matter of minutes if not seconds.