Media Piracy

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

From the moment consumers were able to use the internet to get music, software, and movies, piracy has had serious financial implications for the motion picture industry. Copyright protection presents some difficulty in illegally obtaining movies, but there are many avenues around most of these systems. The RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, has tried several legal ploys to prevent people from accessing this material, but many consumers continue to access it with little concern. Much like the music industry, which was challenged to reinvent its distribution model, the movie industry has to do the same thing. To counter the amount of piracy the movie studios must develop new systems for content delivery including streaming new release movies at home.

Digital piracy or copyright infringement is essentially defined as the unauthorised sharing or use of a product that has been copyrighted, according to the Australian Parliament House (2006). However, the way in which the public infringe has changed over the decades. Initially, recording music being played on the radio onto a cassette player was the inaugural generation of piracy within our modern society. In the 1980s, recording Television (TV) onto Vertical Helical Scan (VHS) recorders became prevalent (C-Span (Created by Cable), 1986). Soon after, the copying or ripping of Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs) and Compact Discs (CDs) soared (The Golden Age of Piracy, 2014). However, none of these methods compare in financial losses to the present generation of piracy – the digital age (IP (Intellectual Property) Awareness Foundation, 2015). The vast lawless regions of the internet provide the perfect haven for digital piracy. Whether content is downloaded through peer to peer (P2P)

Moreover, with these streaming services being so successful, studies have shown that piracy has dropped by 29% in 2015 for the Australian film industry (). Hastings sees Netflix as a solution to piracy by saying:

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.

It is argued by some artist that piracy is a current issue, although the use of some piracy can aid their work. Unauthorized downloading can be a form of word of mouth advertising leading to an increase in digital purchases (Silva & Ramello, 2000). Piracy laws need to adapt to the continuously advancing and changing technology. Cablevision is

Internet piracy is a major problem that been brought by the advancement with the Internet, and it affects not only just one area but across multiple different fields worldwide, including movies, tv dramas, music and software industries. The biggest impact come with copyright infringement is economic damage, film piracy was estimated to cost the economy up to $18.5 billion annually in Hollywood production (Bialik, 2013), and the number raised to $20.5 billion to the industry (Gibbs, 2014) while still increasing to nowadays.

Now that we know what copyright policy is, we can investigate the reason people choose to pirate content rather than pursue legal means of obtainment. One of the leading opinions is that piracy is a service problem. Motherboard writer, Derek Mead, states, “According to a new piracy study funded by NBCUniversal, it appears that a lot of pirates are downloading movies as a matter of convenience” (Mead, 2013). Forbes.com writer, Paul Tassi, supports this theory by stating that “‘[p]iracy is a service problem.’ Valve’s Gabe Newell said that years ago, touting the success of Steam, his online video game distribution service. The premise is that while piracy is appealing because it’s free, it’s also appealing because it’s easy” (Tassi, 2014). These statements clearly describe the way in which piracy, to a great extent, is caused not by people intent on causing harm – but people enticed by convenience.

In today’s technological age and consumer-driven economy, there is no doubt that media piracy and file sharing are in demand and makes a big business. Not only the so called “bootlegged” materials cost less, but most of it also managed to completely imitate the quality of the original materials. It is much easier to people to download movies or music online or buy bootlegged DVDs for 5 dollars than to watch the movie in theaters or pay for the whole CD when there is only one song that the person likes. People know about the possible consequences of these actions, but they do not have a choice especially in these times of economy recession, plus everyone nowadays is doing it, so it would not be considered such a big deal at

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

To name a few people that are affected by stealing things in the virtual world wouldn’t take long at all, since there are thousands of recording industries, software companies, artists, actors, and so many others that work behind the scenes to provide us with the entertainment, and often productivity that we so desperately need. This is where the pirating of copyrighted material can be seen as harmful to others and to themselves. Although, is it really wrong? When you download a piece of pirated software, it 's not taking anything; it is creating a copy of the media and then using it. This is where the debate comes in. Is it wrong to make a copy of something and

Anyone who owns a computer that has a reliable internet connection can potentially download a torrent client and participate in peer-to-peer file sharing. Using a web browser to download files from websites is a lot different than downloading files from peers because instead of obtaining the files from a web server you are obtaining the files directly from ordinary computers like your own, hence the name peer-to-peer (P2P). A lot of people use P2P file sharing as way of sharing and obtaining copyrighted material. In this paper I’ll go over some of the details of P2P file sharing, why it’s such a big issue for

In 2013, game developing 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. As a majority of industries make some part of their revenue off of the internet, piracy is something that must decrease in order for more businesses to make 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. But 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?

In todays digital age it had become easier to download and distribute media. Many individuals have continued to evaluate whether or not punishments for media piracy are harsh enough. This essay will discuss the strengths and weakness of allowing the punishment to stay the same for media piracy. It will also demonstrate why increasing the punishment will have a negative effect on society.

The digital revolution has been one of the most important causes in control of piracy. As the arrival of the digital revolution, it has become not difficult to copy digital information without losing in its features. One more significant cause has been the introduction of the Internet, a commercial Internet protocol that has basically opened the front gate to low cost worldwide sharing. A third facilitator has been the fast growth of high speed internet. Developments in broadband technology have permitted people to upload and download enormous files fast. The existence of these three causes has become a ‘perfect storm’ for illegal downloading. As a result this could considerably destroy market progression and sustainability of companies. (Sudler, 2013).