Torrent Freak Research

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

Piracy has always been an issue for intellectual property owners. Piracy existed even as early as the 1500’s. In one famous instance, Renaissance artist Marcantonio Raimondi copied some of Albrecht Dürer’s works and claimed it was his own (Gambino, 2011). Politicians and content creators try to combat piracy with laws and lawsuits, but people engaging in piracy remain active and elusive. However, the development of the Internet has exacerbated this issue. Technological advancements, specifically the advancements in file sharing, have made the exchange of information extremely inexpensive, quick, and easy. People have direct access to unauthorized copies of millions of movies and songs due to programs such as Napster and Limewire. Thus, illegal

The movie rental industry is a living industry; there are constant changes with advances in technology, rights management, and the slow, but steady, move away from physical Media. Companies such as Netflix, Hulu, RedBox, and Blockbuster are being forced to look at new business models and try to keep up with these changes.

For the past decade, if you wanted to download copyrighted material and didn 't want to pay for it, it 's likely you turned to “The Pirate Bay”. Up until a police raid it was the most popular place to grab Sunday 's episode of “MSNBC or Power” months before the Blu-ray hits stores (Seppala, 2014). You didn 't have to log in to some arcane message board or know someone to get an invite. The anonymous file-sharing site was open to everybody and made piracy as simple as a Google search. That 's what scared Hollywood.

The ethical issues surrounding free video games are the same, with game developers and publishers claiming that game torrents are taking money out of their hands and the hands of their staff. Games are widely available for purchase and once purchased become property of the gamer. A game can range in price from a few dollars to around 60 dollars for AAA games (Games created by large companies on massive budgets). Video games are also almost exclusively downloaded through torrents as game files are usually very large and directly downloading can be cumbersome and time consuming. This is all very straightforward, but what happens if the user misplaces or loses the game disc? Since the game is already that person’s property, would there be harm in downloading another game for free? The game developers say no, and that the game would have to be purchased once more. Many gamers, on the other hand, believe that they are entitled to a free download as they have already purchased the game once and the manufacturer will not be losing any revenue. This debate has been around for the last decades and as of late some developers (mostly indie) have started exclusively selling their product as a downloadable file. Sites like Steam and GOG.com provide the customer with a code after purchase that allows many, and sometimes unlimited, downloads.

Traditional legal principles and processes are constantly challenged by the need to keep pace with copyright issues in particular piracy. The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015

Trevor Raineri Pols 1 M/W 9:00am Professor Percival Mitt The Netflix documentary Mitt seeks to critically analyze what goes on behind the scenes of United States presidential campaigns. It takes a backstage look at 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his families experience throughout his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. This documentary also seeks to look beyond the mainstream media bias and scrutiny in order to adequately characterize Mitt Romney. It shows him as a warm-hearted family man rather than the cold businessman that he was made out to be by his opponents.

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.

With over three billion people in the world utilizing the internet there is great danger for copyright infringement to occur (Internet Live Stats). Copyright law protects the creator of an original piece of work exclusive rights to the work. Many people who use the internet are sharing files that do not belong to them and are guilty of copyright infringement. Copyright law needs to be tightened up in the digital space to protect the creator of their unique work.

"Don't click we will find you"(12), reads an FBI banner. What could be a crime when committed in a move as easy as one single click? Online Piracy is what, a global pandemic of illegally downloaded files that is currently more popular than actually paying for said file. Online piracy, as of now, is a crime but still, it is under debate whether or not it should be prosecuted. Online Piracy should be prosecuted because it can cause damage to personal property, it steals profits away from other musicians, and it is an illegal federal crime.

Kickass Torrents (KAT) owner, Artem Vaulin's motion for dismissing the charges that were filed against him has been rejected by the United States court.

Copyrights of distribution of Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) v iiNet Limited case over infringement of copyrights. They complain that their copyrights were infringed by 4726 internet users downloading and then sharing their work via torrent websites without paying for the privilege. DBC LLC 's, Voltage Pictures, used a German-based firm Macek Eye UG to find out users sharing the film using Bit Torrent and found out 4,726 IP addresses. The case was filed before The Federal Court of Australia requesting the personal details of the infringers linked to the IP addresses to 6 Internet Service Providers (ISP) to recover the damages of copies download and upload by infringers.(DBC) wanted to recover the cost of the purchase of a single copy of the film, for each copy download. A "licence fee" for each person found to have also uploaded the film without copyrights and the court cost for expenses in retrieving each downloader’s name.

I believe that people should be charged with online piracy because their stealing someone's work, who dedicated their time and effort in creating their product. We need to stop online piracy to benefit not only the companies that are being stolen from, but to benefit the economy. Online piracy affects everyone and it needs to be stopped. While you may think that you're saving money, actually just hurting and worsening your country's economy.

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.

Julian Sanchez, research fellow at the Cato Institute, provides an interesting outlook on the issue of piracy, and what should be done. He compares the actions taken in the movie and television industry to prevent piracy by stating: