Persuasive Essay High School

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

The cost of college tuition is continually on the rise and has placed many burdens on high school students as well as their families. Some of the burdens that are placed are a result of parents putting pressure on their children to earn scholarships. Some of the burden is a result of students putting pressure on themselves to earn scholarships. Then, there is the burden of high college debt once the student graduates. Is this pressure really helping our students or is it hurting them? The bottom line is college tuition is skyrocketing out of control and something must be done before it destroys our families and our children.

When someone breaks copyright laws they are stealing, and they are no different than someone that steals from a store. These laws are in place to keep people accountable for their actions and to keep their integrity intact.

In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig puts forth a similar proposal to the one I advocate for, in regards to downloading music files instead of sampling. Lessig states, “Congress should empower file sharing by recognizing a similar system of compulsory licenses. These fees should not be set by an industry intent on killing this new mode of distribution. They should be set, as they have always been set by a policy maker keen on striking a balance.” (Lessig 255). For Lessig the altering of copyright is a matter of principle, one which he corners as uniquely American and even constitutional. “[I]t is about the fundamental values that define this society and whether we will allow those values to change. Are we, in a digital age, to be a free society?” (Lessig 11). Another section reveals an even deeper, almost heartfelt pleading, in which he defines the true reasons for the war between those for and against changes to copyright law.

In 2010, millions of files per day worldwide are being pirated. People should not face the immense fines for simply copying a movie, song, or show. It is not really stealing if you don’t take directly from the person. Laws against piracy are not enforced, so piracy is functionally legal. Prosecuting someone for a huge amount of money is unreasonable.

“Music Piracy is the biggest threat to the development of the licensed music sectors and to the investments of artist.” Amanda Hunter deputy director of communications for the RIAA says “when consumers steal music everyone suffers not only does it rolo recording artist , and songwriters of their livelihoods and threaten the jobs of tens of thousands of less celebrated people in the industry.”

Thomas F. Lee, President, American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (2015) stated, “No one is eager to see copyright infringement lawsuits against individuals. But copyright infringement hurts many thousands of other individuals. Most musicians who depend on CD sales and legal downloading are not wealthy mega-celebrities. They are artists struggling to succeed without a ‘day job’. They are ordinary session musicians who depend on union-negotiated payments that fall drastically when sales fall”. The Livelihood of smaller and lesser known artist are being affected because the illegal download of their music, the illegal download of their music means that there not getting any royalty causing them to suffer financially .This surge in the illegal download off music means that many smaller and less recognizable musicians will now suffer because of the difficult to make money in the industry because of the illegal download off music. “In October, members of 5.7 million U.S. households downloaded at least one unauthorized song using P to P services, according to NPD, which tracks PC usage from 11,000 households” (www.pcworld.about.com,2015) Many artist are having their songs downloaded causing them to lose money, and without the incentive there is no reason for them to keep recording. Artist lose lot of money to illegal downloads and with them not making any money many small band will stop putting out albums. The illegal downloading of music it taking away the incentive for many artists this lowers the amount of new talent coming out and is seriously affecting the music industry. With no incentive and the livelihood and wealth off the music

Drowned in Sound states that 95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal. So what do artists receive for all their hard work? The answer is that they receive close to nothing and their lack of revenue from music downloads could very well lead to drastic changes in the music industry. Not only do they receive little revenue, but they also need money to keep making music, and to support themselves. I believe that music consumers should pay for their music rather than listen to it on free apps or download it illegally.

In order to understand the concept of copyright infringement first we need to know about intellectual property and laws that are under intellectual property. Intellectual property is the property that is the invention or a creative work by one’s own idea or knowledge. There is law that protects this intellectual property by giving some restrictions to the persons who use it; these laws are called copyright laws. When a person who is using the creative work of another person and when that person crosses any limit and opposes copyright law, then it is called copyright infringement. Some cases that are considered as

Copyright policy violations have been a major talking point in the media in recent years. Copyright concerns largely grew in the early 2000’s due to a popular music sharing program called LimeWire. LimeWire allowed people to illegally download, or pirate, the music they were interesting in listening to for free. Limewire launched in 2000 and was shut down in 2010 due to a “permanent injunction issued by a New York-based federal court” (Gearlog, 2010). This injuction brought copyright infringement to the forefront of the headlines as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) attempted to file a lawsuit for $75 trillion. This was settled to $105 million, but they publicity of such a large lawsuit brought more debate to the

In recent years, a major growing concern for the music industry is illegal downloading. Users go to sites like Napster or LimeWire and get songs without paying for them. This is made easy because the Internet makes it simple to share files peer-to-peer (“The Effects of the Internet and Digital Downloading on the Music Industry”). Copyrighted songs do not allow sharing this way, so this is and always has been illegal. However, since there is no real way to stop it, pirating of music still thrives (“The Effects of the Internet and Digital Downloading on the Music Industry”). In theory, when songs and albums are downloaded illegally, the music industry loses money; as people are not buying them and giving money to the artists. Despite this, some studies say that piracy is not harmful and may actually be beneficial to the music industry (“The Effects of the Industry and Digital Downloading on the Music Industry”). According to the European commission, “…findings indicate that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. His means that although there is trespassing of private property rights (copyrights), there is

Piracy, the government call this a crime, other people would call it a response against mega businesses. Whatever piracy is should not remove the fact that the government has laws against piracy, and many wonder what the appropriate punishment for people who don 't follow these laws should be. I like many others, believe that music piracy should not be punished so severely, but of course, like many things in life, this topic won’t have a black and white answer. The point of view of both sides of the fence have a reason for what they do, then it must be known, what type of punishment should music pirates face?

Harsh penalties haven’t worked adequately in the past and it do not have the results one would have expectedat present. The Studios, repeatedly intimidate users by referring to downloading as theft. Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the United States Supreme Court held that copies of copyrighted works cannot be regarded as stolen property for the purposes of a prosecution under a statute criminalizing the interstate transportation of such property.

The downloading of music is also upsetting the artists who are writing and performing the songs. They spend months putting together CDs that people around the world will enjoy. According to an article from CBC News over 100 recording stars including Madonna, Sting, Luciano Pavarotti, B.B. King, Faith Hill, Dr. Dre,

Thousands of people illegally download all types of digital media off of the internet daily. This can include music, games, or various types of software. The owner’s of the intellectual property being pirated would have you believe that the destruction of their respective industries is imminent due to the piracy and that that everyone who takes part is immoral and nothing more than a common thief. They insist that the only way to stop piracy is through stricter enforcement laws. In reality the piracy is harmless, if not beneficial to the media industries, and the people doing it are just as harmless. The real threat is to the people and our personal