Piracy is A Problem, But the Stop Online Piracy Act is Not An Answer

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

Although the action of retrieving music illegally can be easily accessed as group three states, “majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals...would not have been purchased if illegal websites were not available to them” it provides a weak point because either way people see it music is available to them with purchase and if that is the only option than that process will occur. The society that illegally downloaded music created can be seen in one huge source known as, “Napster” in an article, by Stephen Seigel he states, “ Napster allows its users to "share" songs with other users, completely bypassing the traditional forms of music distribution” (“Nipping at Napster”). Napster allows people to share all types of

The government believes certain things should be censored and perhaps paid for in order to be used by everyone. Many disagree with this and say that their freedom of speech rights are somewhat violated. In Regulation and Technology, Falzone says, “The government has a role to play. It needs to protect the public good by keeping the structure open and preserving the ability of new participants to use the network in new and unforeseen ways.” Basically the internet has standards to maintain and they want them to be protected at all

Since the internet is a huge platform, for the government to be able to regulate every single thing that would be a threat or is meant to hurt someone is next to impossible. Many big social media companies regulate their website by algorithm, when a certain amount of people report a post that is offensive or is meant to hurt someone emotionally, it will be taken down. According to Self-regulation of Internet Content, “Filtering technology can empower users by allowing them to select the kinds of content they and their children are exposed to. Used wisely, this technology can help shift control of and responsibility for harmful content from governments, regulatory agencies, and supervisory bodies to individuals” (Pg.9). Therefore, regulating the content that is posted on the internet is a crucial step that is needed to be taken to insure that people are not able to emotionally hurt someone with an internet

Online piracy doesn’t only necessarily harm the music industry but harms other industries that are available in an economy, such as the movie industry. For instance, in the years of 2009 and 2010, a research study showed an estimate of 12,600 jobs and $1.8 billion were lost throughout the entire Canadian economy due to the piracy of movies let alone piracy of other content (source). The physical recorded music worldwide was exceling in the 1990’s, having profits as high as $37 billion in 1999 however that number significantly drops to $25 billion by 2007. Several organizations agreed that the drastic decrease in revenue not solely in Canada but worldwide, is due to online piracy. It has caused songwriters lose their jobs and staying without works and is demotivating new artists into the industry since it is a much harder process now to get signed into the business now. Furthermore, the technological change that keep occurring has reduced how effective the degree of protection that copyright laws have ever since

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

The First Amendment of the Constitution distinguishes Americans from other citizens in the world. The right to free speech, press, and religion is at the core of the Americanvalue system. As a result, when thesefreedoms are challenged people tend to react strongly. However, at times government officials and theirconstituents would argue that censorship, or other violations of Constitutionalrights, are legitimate. With the advent of new technologies, politicians createnew policies to gain control over these technologies. This attempt to exertcontrol appears in the legislation geared towards the Internet. Currently free speech thrives on theInternet. A very large variety ofopinions are expressed on

"The internet is a vast expansion that has come into its own in the last couple decades. Internet culture is ever evolving, and information is available to virtually anyone with a click of a mouse. This invention has revolutionized the format of society, in both positive and negative aspects. The saying “you can find anything on the internet” is not far off. While many internet users only use the internet for basics, such as Google and Youtube, there is a secret and much darker place known as the ‘dark web’ that is filled with vile/illegal imagery, videos, and products. For this reason I believe that it is the duty of the federal government to regulate the internet, to an extent.

The Internet already makes it easy for the computer savvy individuals to copy music illicitly. Widespread file sharing has led content providers and distributors of content to view their customers as growing threats to their survival. Anything we can watch, read, or listen to over our computers can be copied. If Americans are willing to steal intellectual property, and if increased access speeds will enable us to do so almost effortlessly, then a large part of our entertainment-based economy is in peril. Napster showed that people who wouldn’t even consider shoplifting would readily download pirated music. Just as people have less incentive to work if high tax rates appropriate the fruits of their labors, so media companies would have less

The most controversial part of SOPA is its mandatory filtering of materials uploaded by users, which is considered online censorship. Early in 1998 America adopted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, know as DMCA which criminalized unauthorized copy but also created a “safe harbors”. Safe harbors explicitly protected search engines and social networks from prosecution for users’ actions. (Herman, 73) In DMCA host websites are not responsible for users’ copyright violation behaviors and if host websites move users’ illegal materials online after they received notice they will not be charged. But in SOPA these host websites are responsible for everything on their website. They need to filter information users want to express before publication to prevent copyright infringement. DCMA allows material from individuals to be published first and if any materials violate copyrights host websites will remove it but the procedures in SOPA is different. SOPA intends to prevent copyright infringement by expand the influence of copyright violation to include both users who upload illegal materials and host websites. In SOPA host websites are

U.S civilians run the risk of losing many rights with government regulating the internet. For example privacy, many government requests has been sent to Google for information on their consumers. In the Google transparency report, a U.S. law enforcement agency asked Google to take down a blog that "allegedly defamed a law enforcement official in a personal capacity." The company denied that request. Another separate and different law enforcement group asked Google to take down one thousand four hundred videos on YouTube (Google owns YouTube) because of "alleged harassment." Dorothy Chou, a Google analyst states, "It 's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect, Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.” The company did not oblige either of those demands but as the report states, they did fulfil at least with forty- two percent of the removal requests from the United States in 2011. That number compared to the past reports is very low; in 2010, for example, Google said it complied with eighty-seven percent of U.S. requests to take down content. In 2011, Google received six thousand three hundred and twenty one requests for

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

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.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines piracy as “the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted or patented material.” It is a problem that affects companies all over the world. Piracy of software, movies, and music is commonplace in China. China has the second worst piracy rate in the world; about 92 percent of the software in China is pirated (Williams 2004). Various companies and governments have attempted to combat piracy, but they had not seen much success until recent years. Combating piracy is a difficult task, especially in a country that has a history of not enforcing intellectual property laws.

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