Peer to Peer Piracy and the Film Industry Essay

Motion pictures are a key driver of the market for entertainment products, one of the largest export markets in US. Motion picture industry consists of three stages: studio production, distribution, and exhibition. The studios produce the lifeblood of the industry, the films that are its content. The biggest players at this level are the majors, big studios which integrate production and distribution, as do the slightly smaller mini-majors. The next stage is distribution. Distributors are the intermediaries between the studios and exhibitors. Distribution entails all steps following a film’s artistic completion including marketing, logistics, and administration. Distributors coordinate the manufacture and distribution of

After reading “Dear Piracy Apologist: Downloading unreleased films is not cool”, the author expresses that he does not torrent films with the reasoning of, ‘because I can does not mean that I should.’ He states opposing arguments with bias for anti-piracy and defends reasons not to pirate.

Most people, no matter what social class they´re in, have watched a pirated movie. By definition, movie piracy is the illegal duplicating of movies for sale or any personal use. Or in other words, if you want to watch a movie, you have to pay for it. No matter, if you pay for a movie ticket, a D.V.D. or pay to stream it online, that payment goes to many different levels of people who help make the movie. The latest movement to attack the American society is movie pirating. In any city, it is easy to find individuals selling pirated copies of movies illegally. A great number of the world´s black market business is represented by pirated movies. The use and invention of the internet allowed for creation and expansion of downloading, sharing files and editing files. Pirates around the world used this innovation in technology to their advantage. Movie piracy has become a plague to the world´s economy because of the theft of over millions from the film industry.

Before statistics are thrown in, as well as interviews and other various factoids, the definition of piracy should be made clear. Piracy refers to the act of using or reproducing another’s work without authority. The alternate definition; however, which is older and still used today, means, “The attacking and robbing of ships at sea.” You will never see Blackbeard torrenting (torrenting is a popular form of obtaining pirated media) the latest Katy Perry album, and you will never see some nerdy kid with no money plundering a cruise ship. Public opinion of piracy is not a very positive one: record companies, film producers, and even some game developers see pirates as heartless criminals, sitting behind a keyboard as they download millions of dollars worth of stolen content, and in turn, about forty percent of the general public see it that way as

If we 're losing so much money from these pirates, how much piracy is there. That’s a very hard question to answer because there is so much. It’s like counting ants; the figures are so small. A lot of companies use the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) statistics. They 're not perfect but they work for research purposes.

Digital Media; as in software, music, movies, books, and anything else which can be stored in binary representation, which then, can be so conveniently transmitted across the globe over the world wide web to anyone and everyone, with total disregard to any copyright laws what so ever, which is where the piracy part comes in.

What exactly is media piracy? The definition of Piracy is “The unauthorized use of another’s production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright” (Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary online, 2017) In this digital day and age, gone are the days where the majority of people pirating media are “ripping” blank CD’s or making physical copies of movies, almost all of it is digital. Digital piracy is slightly different, and by definition is “The act of reproducing, using, or distributing information products, in digital formats and/or using digital technologies, without the authorization of their legal owners.” (Belle flame & Peitz.) How

You are a movie producer that is making the next big movie and you are trying to make sure that it is the best thing that you have ever made. You make a movie titled Piracy or not, you put a lot of time and money into trying to make this movie. You finally finish and wants your movie to make you some money so that you can feed your family and buy that dream house and car that you always wanted. Someone, a stranger, perhaps, or someone that you know really well, decides that your movie is so great, but they know that others don’t want to pay the two dollars that you want the people to pay. So, they decide to put your movie on a website that people don’t have to pay to download the movie. You finally realize that you are not making any money because everyone has downloaded your movie for free from hotmoviesnow.com. Piracy can happen to anyone and that is a fact, and everyone needs to protect their movies and music. Many people just ask that you pay the one or two dollars that they want you to pay to download it legally instead of illegally. If the shoe was on the other foot, then you would want them to pay you for the time and money that you put into the music and movies. Online Piracy is a federal crime and it should be prosecuted because it is illegal, many should already know the difference between right and wrong, and it is stealing from the people who have worked so hard to think of, and write the material that you are trying to steal.

Since the implementation of IPRs, people around the world have resorted to piracy to consume media. With the rise of the internet, more consumers are increasingly performing online piracy. Distribution of content is simpler as it can be done using a single link via torrent instead of making individual copies for everyone. Not only does it save time, it also “reduces the costs in copying the content onto physical media” (Kirwan, 2011, p. 177). There was lesser risk of conducting piracy over the internet as well. Pirates can simply use virtual private networks (VPNs) to increase their anonymity and thus, evade detection. Nowadays, media files can be compressed to different types of format to accommodate the consumers’ preference, and the device that they are consuming on. For instance, a video is best viewed in mp4 on a smartphone but require a different format on another device. Coupled with faster internet speeds and increased broadband usage, media piracy will continue to increase in the future. While this may be good to some, others are not in favour of

Online piracy is another substantial type of a cybercrime. With rapid developments to technology, piracy has become easier and more widespread. Piracy, the act of pirating, is defined as the illegal reproduction, via copying or counterfeiting, of any type of work which includes: software, recordings, or even motion pictures. Although are many ways to pirate material, online piracy is most common. Online piracy uses the internet, and computer technology to illegally reproduce material. There are many detrimental effects of piracy that affects businesses, individuals, and even society.

that the film makers would have made if the person hadn’t been able to access the movie online and was to go to the movie theatre to watch it, or buy their DVD when it comes out. Instead, they are watching these movies for little to no cost, sometimes the least a person must do is watch an ad every now and then (which only benefits the person who stole and published someone else’s work), and go right back to enjoying their movie, for free. In one instance, an 11-employee Independent U.S film distributor, Wolfe Video, had its profits halved due to piracy and costs to mitigate damages, according to the Wall Street Journal (Strauss, 2013).

Torrenting is a useful tool to gain access to large amounts of information. It grants the user an opportunity to download media files with ease and accuracy. Due to its simplistic user interface, the general public makes use of this software, which in return causes a problem for media and production companies. Production companies lose millions of dollars each year due to their copyright information being distributed between peers. Torrenting is both a problem and an opportunity depending on the audience. Peers to other peers can consider Torrenting the distribution of information. This is an act of copyright violation depending on the information being distributed.

Hard goods pirates also use the Internet to sell illegally duplicated DVDs through auctions and websites.While trafficking copyrighted works through increasingly sophisticated electronic means, such as peer-to-peer file trading networks, Internet chat rooms, and newsgroups, has an ever increasing negative impact on cultural industries, it is also argued that curtailing this phenomenon limits the right of access to information, knowledge and culture (4).

Today, online piracy is a widespread issue. People do so for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is money. Stuff is expensive. Why spend $15 on DVD, when one could pirate hundreds for free? The ability to acquire things freely is fundamentally an un-solvable issue. The next, and the easiest to fix, reason why people pirate online is because of unavailability of certain

A new emerging view has also arisen out of this predicament. This stance argues that piracy has had a positive effect on all of the industries it has affected. One idea is that those who pirate materials and enjoy them are likely to advertise via word of mouth. Those people who pirate materials are likely to spread good word about them, if they are truly good, and therefore other may hear these reviews and go and purchase the content for themselves. Sometimes piracy leads users to a “try before you buy” mentality which helps consumers decide whether or not they want to purchase an item. For example, someone might pirate a movie to see what their first impression is, then go see it in theaters for the experience. This is true for other media as well.