File Sharing on the Internet Essay

History generally depicts piracy as a radical system of violent practices and unconventional beliefs. This version of piracy is certainly more thrilling and romantic, and is arguably more entertaining, than the reality. Unbeknownst to most people, pirate society was a very well thought out system with strict rules, a judiciary body, and even social security benefits. In his book, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates In the Golden Age, author Marcus Rediker attempts to convey these truths and disprove the many common misconceptions surrounding piracy. He outlines the structure of pirate society as an egalitarian invention used to combat the unfair wages, mistreatment of workers, and poor labor conditions present aboard merchant vessels. In fact, pirate culture exemplifies the very beginnings of modern-day capitalism. Take, for example, the very promotion of freedom of the seas against the state monopolies that claimed ownership rights on sea routes. This capitalistic behavior would unknowingly contribute to today’s standards of a capitalistic society.

In the global market that we leave in companies are trying to find any and everyway that they can to get ahead in their respective markets. This most of the time brings out the most innovate thinkers that can come up with a way to keep it’s company on top of their market and sometimes we see that there are companies that like to take a short cut by using non legal and malicious methods. According to Lewis, (1985), Software piracy is the illicit copying of the operating instructions and applications programs, which make computers work, is a large and growing industry. The Pirate Bay is part of a European social and political movement that opposes copyrighted content and demands that music, videos, TV shows, and other digital content be free and unrestricted. In the words of the Pirate Party, “the Pirate Bay is a unique platform for distributing culture between regular people and independent artists, and that’s something we want to preserve.”

Authors present similar information in different ways. In the golden age of piracy, despite being disputed when it actually happened. Despite sometimes being worlds apart, the similarities in all these people and their dastardly deeds is incredible. Their paths frequently intersected either through direct contact or other things. Both Rediker and Greene talk about similar situations and people, but they discussed it quite differently. From showcasing the hardships to glorifying their short and fast paced lives, their arguments are as different as night and day, but give us a solid insight into the average life of a pirate in the golden age of piracy.

In 1999, Shawn Fanning and his little program called Napster created quite a stir in society. Napster's software allows music listeners to open pieces of their personal hard drives to everyone using Napster, sharing whatever MP3 songs they have already downloaded or stored. At any time, thousands of people are online, sharing hundreds of thousands of songs, many of which are technically illegal to download without the permission of the copyright holders. [1] This led to a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, with the rock group Metallica as its frontman. In this case, several issues were brought up, one of which was the right of the creator of the music to control what happens with

Villains of All Nations, by Marcus Rediker, is a collection of ideas and information about pirates in the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy, between the years 1650 and 1730. This book is a collection of the unprecedented social and cultural history of pirates, mainly at sea, but also before they became pirates, and how piracy affected maritime culture. It delves into the ideas and realities of pirate life and helps further an understanding of piracy during this time. Rediker claims, “The pirates of the 1710s and 1720s were among the greatest ever in the long history of robbery by sea” (Rediker 8). The text explores the Golden Age of piracy and the generation that shaped the modern, romanticized view of pirates.

It can be argued that the music industry has expanded into countless genres, artists and record labels over the years since 2000 to become bigger than it has ever been. So where have all the sales gone? It’s more than evident that file sharing has become much more attractive to music fans than it once was. People haven’t lost their interest in music, but have instead found new ways of obtaining it. These File sharing software such as Azuerus give the everyday computer the ability to obtain any files it’s user would like with a good internet connection and a couple clicks of a mouse. In short, people no longer need to pay for any music that they would like to own.

Imagine sailing the seven seas looking for ships to plunder and cities to barricade. This was the life of many sailors back during the Golden Age of piracy. Although many sailors lived their life as pirates, some were actually privateers and were mistaken for pirates. Privateers were like pirates, but instead of raiding for personal gain they did it for the sake of their country. They did not perform gruesome executions and did not always stay at sea like other pirates. Pirates on the other hand were usually ex-privateers that realized there was more money in pirating. Pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy often lived a very wealthy lifestyle due to all of the loot they stole off of ships. Most pirates during this era stayed around what is now called

1700 marks the “Golden Age” of piracy, where the seas and oceans were filled with many of the world’s famous pirates like “Calico Jack”, Edward Low and the notorious Blackbeard (“The Golden”). Although they sound a lot like legends, there is no doubt that pirates have became a part of today’ s media and a famous subculture in style and stories (“Pirates in”). Blackbeard’s story has been influential in the pirate subculture and has been referenced in different kinds of stories, movies and cartoons like Pirates of the Caribbean and One Piece. Blackbeard’s life and legacy is still a heavy influence on pirate subculture today.

Despite the work of piracy being an exercise of serving self- interest, a single pirate alone could not become successful in creating a force strong enough to make any sort of living. Pirates depended on the ability of their crewmates to get done what had to be done. The crew of a pirate ship live in close quarters with each other when ever they were at sea and because of this, “ ships formed ‘floating societies’ that, like all societies required social rules and governance institutions to function” (Leeson 203). These rules and governances were instituted through the pirate code. The concept of a pirate code has become popular through its appearances in films like Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Cures of the Black Pearl. However, unlike

eventually taken down due to copyrights and legality it trespassed in, but even after its demise, many new sites that allowed torrenting and other p2p file sharing began to spring up all over the internet. This led to the development of many of the sites that are still around today, such as the recently deceased Pirate Bay, Bittorrent, and many others. With the development of all of these newfound websites, it set the way for internet downloading as never seen before. People had before been restricted to VHS and CD burners, but never before something of this magnitude. With the massive increase in pirating done over the internet, companies and individuals soon became aware of the possibilities that could happen if their music or product became available to pirate.

When many people think of pirates they think of the fictitious Hollywood films that depict the animated characters that have shaped our perception of pirates today. The reality of the situation is that pirates are very real and have emerged as a major threat to the maritime industry as well as ship owners and national economies alike. Although the threat of piracy has yet to receive the attention that many feel it deserves, piracy has increasingly affected the way in which the maritime industry conducts business with other countries in many ways. Piracy not only affects the involved nations both economically and politically, it also contributes to ship owners’ overall cost structures as well as day to day operations. We will discuss

Napster did not have a long run, it was up for a total of two full years until law enforcement stepped in a decided it was time to make rules and shut the program down. As Janssens states, “First it tried to dissuade people to get involved in P2P file sharing by

The amount of file sharing that was taking place soon caught the attention of musicians and record companies who were afraid widespread distribution of the material would lead to huge monetary losses for the recording industry. Some artists were even experiencing “leaked material,” or material being uploaded and shared with others before it was even released publicly. The popular heavy metal band Metallica discovered one of their singles was circulating widely on Napster before being officially released, and even ended up playing on some radio stations. This caught the attention of the band and they soon realized their entire music catalogue was available for free on Napster and decided to file a lawsuit (Doan). Hip hop artist Dr. Dre also filed a lawsuit against

A student comes home to his dorm at the University of Scranton after a rough day

There has been extensive growth in the number of people accessing the Internet. For this reason, the Internet has become a necessity to the American population, shown in the estimated 50 million users on-line in the U.S. The ease of Internet access has increased along with the advances in technology. Along with price and availability, changes in the web and web browsers have allowed pirates to offer illegal copies of software that can be downloaded by even the most uneducated user. Most Internet piracy is accomplished in the home or the office, with very little risk of being caught. The very nature of the Internet requires the user to rely on will power and morality to resist temptation to