Essay on The Global Ethical Perspective of Peer-to-peer File-sharing

The pervasive nature of the Internet has made the copying of music and software exceptionally easy, fast and for the most part, undetectable. The ubiquity of the Internet and the speed at which music and software can be copied is also changing the sociological and legal aspects of computing as well (De George, 2006). For the first time the availability of technology is driving a level of expertise with computer users globally that give them the opportunity to capture, distribute, duplicate and even re-publish massive amounts of intellectual property that isn't theirs (Wilson, 2007). This is forcing the issue of copyright infringement and the protection of intellectual property at a global scale. In so doing, this dynamics is also re-ordering ethics surrounding all forms of digital content as well.

In the various media industries there are extreme worries concerning unauthorized downloading and copying of their products known as piracy. Piracy of items has been part of commerce for centuries; counterfeiting of currency for example. With the information age the ease at which media can be pirated has caused an explosion of this phenomenon. This practice is an illegal act that is done by individuals for personal use and also for profit. The first do not seem to see the issues caused by this practice such as; the spreading of viruses and lower quality products. We will use Reynolds' Seven-Step Ethical Decision Making Approach for the breakdown of the ethical reality of software piracy.

Millions of users can be linked to each other through this software at one time. The software is often free and easily available. Services such as Kazaa, Ares, LimeWire and BearShare are examples of sites that offer these programs free of charge. Other times, the software may be offered in the form of a subscription, such as iTunes and Napster. But is file sharing ethical? The music industry says no, where as the millions of file sharers agree that downloading is.

The legality of the P2P service is not very obvious, apparently. But what about the ethics of the software providers? Is it morally right to enable the free exchange of music, without enforcing a proper compensation to the copyright owners?

This report shows that digital piracy can reduce the growth of digital content. However it’s also encouraged many positives

The Internet has served as a medium for peers to share any kind of files, like pictures, videos, music, books, etc. However, in order for peers to be able to exchange files, a platform is needed. There are many platforms available that serve as a bridge technology so that peers can share files with other peers around the world. These platforms only serve as a connection devise and not as a piracy store. As a result of the existence of these types of platforms, industries became concerned that this practice is violating the copyrights of the copyright holders. These industries demand that these platforms are shut down. However, these sharing file platforms state that they are not

A peer-to-peer network is a group of interconnected computers in which all computers have equal privileges to share and access information in the network without the need of a consent or approval from a central authority. Each computer can communicate with every other computer (or peer) on the network directly without any restrictions. The access rights are completely governed by the individual computers and can be controlled by assigning passwords if required. Peers are both suppliers and consumers of information and are able to simultaneously function as both client and server. A client is someone who initiates the request and a server fulfils the request.

In today’s society, internet plays a pivotal role, influencing individuals in all classes, of all ages, and in various financial backgrounds. Because the Net dominates a large portion of the population’s time, many people have become accustomed to its current policies and ease of access to different types of media. So when consumers were threatened with the possibility of change, an enthusiastic reaction occurred worldwide. Internet users today are acclimated to downloading or torrenting music, games, and movies that would normally have a fee, for free, infringing the media’s copyrights in the process. Due to the rapid growth in this illicit activity, legislations such as SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA have been proposed; however they have been met

In the year of 2005, there totaled 147 case files in the area of intellectual property crimes. (Weier) This number has risen exponentially throughout the 21st century, as more and more productions move to the realm of cyberspace. Hearing a coworker or peer bragging about illegally downloading films or music appears to be more common in the year 2016. The sudden advancement of technology appears to perpetuate a sense of virtual comfort in theft. Further, pro-piracy groups paint an argument that piracy composes very little potential to affect others negatively. Unfortunately, the resulting apathy cannot be easily targeted or terminated. End users may not have the experience or may simply not care much, as long as they possess the ability to easily get away with piracy. Laws should be pushed onto internet service providers in the case of formatting a response to suspicious client-server network traffic. The solution would be configured to allow privacy, while restricting the use of torrent sites that condone the distribution of illegal

Consumers are using at a majority rate of peer to peer file sharing, which is the networking of two or more computers that share files while on one server. Using P2P has been a much reliable in which all the shared contents by the consumers has less failures in maintaining and the consumer can control their resources.

Have you ever heard of peer to peer file sharing technology or P2P? What is P2P? According to J.A Pouwelse. P. Garbacki and his article “The Bittorrent P2P File-Sharing System: Measurements and Analysis”, “P2P is the transfer of a digital file from one “peer” to another. “peer” refers to computer clients. This transfer can be as simple as the File Transfer Protocol(FTP), which transfer a file directly to a visitor’s personal computer through a server-hosted website (Pouwelse, Garbacki, Epema, Sip, 2005).” File sharing create many ethical issues, but these ethical issues can be different if we are looking at it morally, ethically or legally. Moral is an individual’s belief about right or wrong. Not everyone will have the same moral beliefs because they have different background or culture. For examples, we can see many people streaming many document online and or sharing this document and these people do not consider this issue a problem. If we look at it in an author stand point we might consider this issue a problem since it influences our benefit. On the other hand, if we are looking at a user standpoint, we do not think it is a problem because we are not paying for the information we are accessing. We can conclude, that It depends on your cultural belief. Ethic is a belief that depends on the society. The society or a group determines if a situation is good or bad. An individual cannot change the ethical belief unless a group. This can be

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 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

The originating server (the seed) makes available one copy of the file, which is then split up into chunks. Different chunks are sent out to the various computers (BitTorrent clients) trying to get hold of a copy of the file.

Ever since 18-year-old Shawn Fanning created Napster in his Northeastern University dorm room in 1999, downloading and sharing music online has become one of the most popular things to do on the Internet today. But why wouldn't it? Getting all your favorite songs from all your favorite artists for free, who wouldn't want to start sharing music? The answer to that question are the people who feel that stealing from the music industry is not morally right, because that is exactly what every person who shares music is doing. People who download music think it's something they can get away with but now it might be payback time to a lot of those people.