The Most Overlooked Crime: Piracy Essay

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

Pirating music, regardless of reason, is illegal in the United States and holds great penalties. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the entity in charge of enforcing copyright violations. According to their website, “Criminal charges may leave you with a felony record, accompanied by up to five years of jail time and fines up to $250,000” (RIAA). With charges at that rate, the public would be expected to pay the $0.99 fee for a song on iTunes rather than face the repercussions, but the rate only increased. The problem lies in the actual enforcement of the laws. Mass CD distribution can be sourced back to a seller and exploited in that manner, but the average person in this

The bigger companies like Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Song BMG Music Entertainment, etc., have the big dollars to promote all of their artists. Because the Internet has caught on, all of the music companies can promote everyone. Even the little companies can do this. Hopefully, the music industry will look at this as a blessing in disguise for the underground labels. Looking at this in the short-term of things, downloading music could hurt the music industry and their profits. However, later down the line, it will eventually benefit them. In a study done by Ipsos-Reid, it shows that 81% of the public that download music, often spend at least the same on records or even more than they did before downloading music from the Internet. The record industry must concentrate on offering value to the user and adapt to the publics needs (Vives, 2004). The music industry should try to realize that the ideas behind free downloads can benefit them. They should do what they can to market more from it, rather than turning their noses up at the technology behind it. They should realize that they waste more money on fighting the sites that offer free downloads and lobbing Congress to stop the downloading, they should build a system in which all music is readily available free. Making sites with easy to follow links to other online music store so that the people can buy music from the same place that they listen to it.

First, Online Piracy hurts many people but the most important are the downloaders. People tend to not talk about the fact that not only does it hurt others, it also opens the downloader's computer and sensitive documents to threat. As said in the Info Sheet, "When you participate in peer-to-peer networks private and sensitive documents on your computer

Digital piracy on music has been a majorly disputed affair for the last eighteen years, about whether or not it favors the musical artists or affects them in a negative fashion. One of the many sides of the Digital piracy controversy expounds that it benefits the artist(s) by giving them a great deal of exposure that they may not have received had they not downloaded it for free, which in turn makes for a very significant acquisition in terms of sales on their part.

Illegal Piracy has been a problem for many musical artist. The law is not really enforced on piracy. Many people get away with it and very few get prosecuted with a fine . Musicians spend time to make music for people and to make money for their own reasons, like for food or clothes. Movie makers are also victims of Illegal Piracy, along with many others, piracy to them should be

It affects more than they realize - Piracy is not a victimless crime. The mainstream media needs to do its part and demonize those that offend. This would be the quickest way to stop the flow of these stolen materials from having a broader reach and hope to deter those who distribute. Remember the popularity of music group Milli Vanilli? No? That’s because after their lip-syncing scandal they were attacked by the press and were unable to continue recording without public backlash. I hope that this would work similarly for these vile and deplorable individuals. In conjunction with the federal punishment, the individuals should receive a lifetime ban from listening to all music, and receive another large fine if they are caught in violation.

It is believed that illegal downloading does not affect the music industry and that recording artists are rich, so there is nothing wrong with grabbing a

When people buy music, they get legal rights to that purchase, known as Intellectual Property (IP). But some people do not like to buy music. Whether they know it or not, they use piracy as their way to get music. They use softwares, look music up on the internet, or find somebody selling it. Piracy can be destructive to people or organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). People

There are many forms of digital content. All of them can be stolen and this is illegal as is any other form of stealing. Digital piracy is the sharing and downloading digital content illegally. The problem with digital piracy has been around for over 20 years, however due to many factors such as the recession and the increasing development of technology the problem is becoming increasing difficult to manage (QUIGLEY, 2008). However the ability to buy the content online has boosted the profit for many creators of digital content.

Music piracy has been detrimental to the music industry and I believe it will only get worse with time. Music has become much easier for people to steal off the internet without paying the artist a dime. Technology continues to improve exponentially every year, because of these improvements in technology piracy has become much more accessible to music pirates. Overall album sales have gone down from 500 million units sold in 2007 to 200 million units sold in 2016. If this trend continues it will eliminate some of the smaller artists who depend on album sales to pay for studio time and other expenses. These lesser known artists also usually lack the funds to try to prosecute these music pirates and get their music off of the sites they are being

Online piracy is illegal and people shouldn't be doing or even thinking of stealing something that's not yours. People need to make money in order to eat, but can't if others commit online piracy. Musicians take time in creating a song and sacrifice a lot for their song to be pushed forward in the music industries. Musicians need to eat and be able to afford their house, but can't if other people are stealing their products. Online piracy can also affect others by showing that you're stealing something that not yours and basically taking credit for it. Main point is that stealing is bad and it wouldn't get you anywhere in the world.

The internet is an unregulated and chaotic environment that is only loosely governed by social norms that have been established by the more well-respected users leading the rest over many years. The anonymity of these billions of users allows them to break these rules and conventions with little risk of negative consequence. One of the biggest problems that stems from this is the pirating of media. Internet pirates will make media such as movies, television shows, and music available on websites such as The Pirate Bay, where users can download this content this free. This system takes money away from creators and designers and gives it to the advertisers on pirating websites.

The question then became “Just because we can get the music we want without paying for it, should we?” (Tyson, 2000, p.1). This issue of illegal downloads, which is also referred to as piracy, has been a hot topic ever since the introduction of Napster. According to Recording Industry Association of America “In the decade since peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 47 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion” (RIAA, 2014).

Producers of musical content cannot undo the adverse effects that piracy has had on the industry. Because of the internet and the way individuals have manipulated it to obtain music, many people are unwilling to change their habits. Here lies the issue between the producer and the consumer. Acts like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) work against the incentive of many consumers by telling them that they cannot do what maximizes their utility. Producers are thus working against the likings of the consumer. This is wrong.