Media Piracy
Vicente K. Maselli
Florida International University CGS 3095 Section RVCC Summer.2017
Abstract
Media piracy can sometimes be viewed as a repercussion of the digital age we live in. Although it had grown to become a common practice over the last 20 years, media piracy continues to be an illegal activity monitored by the Federal Bureau for Intelligence (FBI). Its effects range over a variety of industries, including software, music, TV and movie production. There is no denying that media piracy has transformed the way consumers enjoy products. By analyzing the origins of media piracy, studying its usage today, and debating the global and ethical views, one can see how this is an issue
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2. BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE
Media piracy influences many parties involved, including the content creators, retailers, and consumers. Media piracy costs content creators and retailers between $200 and $250 billion per year and is estimated to be responsible for the loss of 750,000 American [2]. The sudden shift in the movie industry has led to the closing of once-stable businesses such as Blockbuster. Retailers are now competing against home-viewing options and have had to shift their business models to stay relevant, such as adding food service and updated seating to movie theatres. While the change in business can be attributed to technological extinction and legal home-streaming options such as iTunes and Netflix, many consumers are choosing illegal streaming such as Popcorn Time, an app that enables free online streaming of movies and television shows using BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. Consumers are ultimately affected when using sites such as Popcorn Time because they are exposing their computer systems to harmful viruses and experiencing a less-then-desirable quality of media.
2.1 Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
The sudden surge of media piracy over the last 20 years can be associated with many factors, including the growing accessibility of personal computers and internet access and the digitalization of physical media, but the greatest enabler of media
A very long debate in college sports is if the athletes should be paid. Author Jared Walch, talks about both sides of the issue, but later in the article it seems he sides with the argument that they should be paid. In the beginning of the article, he talks about why the athletes shouldn’t be paid. Walch first argues that this is all a choice for the athletes. They choose to put themselves in harms way of possible injury and not every athlete gets injured. Another argument that the author discusses is how to pay the athletes. Who pays the athletes and how do you distribute the money? The two programs to bring in the most money are football and men’s basketball. Women’s golf athletes are still college athletes. So even though they don’t make as much money, will they still be paid? Most athletes are already at school for scholarships. If you already have everything paid for by the university, what more would you need paid for? The author later goes into the morality and how paying the athletes would take away some of the entertainment of watching college athletes play. Towards the end of his article, Walch
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
Nathaniel Hawthorne believes that only good and virtuous people are able to forgive. Roger Chillingworth is portrayed as a stereotypical villain because he is sinister, unrelenting, and unforgiving. Hawthorne shows that evil beings, such as Chillingsworth, are unable to forgive and instead dedicate their lives to punishing the sinner for their mistake. Chillingsworth displays his unforgiving nature when he “devot[ed] himself, for seven years” (Hawthorne 187) to the severe torturing of Dimmesdale, a hidden adulterer. Further, Chillingworth has an evil soul furthering his development as a villain. Chillingsworth will punish his prey forever and never forgive his enemy and will make him suffer like no “mortal [has] suffer[ed]” (Hawthorne 189).
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:
From the moment consumers were able to use the internet to get music, software, and movies, piracy has had serious financial implications for the motion picture industry. Copyright protection presents some difficulty in illegally obtaining movies, but there are many avenues around most of these systems. The RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, has tried several legal ploys to prevent people from accessing this material, but many consumers continue to access it with little concern. Much like the music industry, which was challenged to reinvent its distribution model, the movie industry has to do the same thing. To counter the amount of piracy the movie studios must develop new systems for content delivery including streaming new release movies at home.
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:
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.
With an increasingly high number of new technology being invented and innovated so often the issues pertaining to digital piracy are a relatively new phenomenon. Digital piracy is defined as unauthorized copying of digital software, videos, documents, and audio without permission from or compensation to the owner of the copyright (Wolfe & Higgins, 2009). While piracy is against the law, it is something many people will commit without knowing or without an understanding of what they are really doing.
In today’s technological age and consumer-driven economy, there is no doubt that media piracy and file sharing are in demand and makes a big business. Not only the so called “bootlegged” materials cost less, but most of it also managed to completely imitate the quality of the original materials. It is much easier to people to download movies or music online or buy bootlegged DVDs for 5 dollars than to watch the movie in theaters or pay for the whole CD when there is only one song that the person likes. People know about the possible consequences of these actions, but they do not have a choice especially in these times of economy recession, plus everyone nowadays is doing it, so it would not be considered such a big deal at
To name a few people that are affected by stealing things in the virtual world wouldn’t take long at all, since there are thousands of recording industries, software companies, artists, actors, and so many others that work behind the scenes to provide us with the entertainment, and often productivity that we so desperately need. This is where the pirating of copyrighted material can be seen as harmful to others and to themselves. Although, is it really wrong? When you download a piece of pirated software, it 's not taking anything; it is creating a copy of the media and then using it. This is where the debate comes in. Is it wrong to make a copy of something and
The digital revolution has been one of the most important causes in control of piracy. As the arrival of the digital revolution, it has become not difficult to copy digital information without losing in its features. One more significant cause has been the introduction of the Internet, a commercial Internet protocol that has basically opened the front gate to low cost worldwide sharing. A third facilitator has been the fast growth of high speed internet. Developments in broadband technology have permitted people to upload and download enormous files fast. The existence of these three causes has become a ‘perfect storm’ for illegal downloading. As a result this could considerably destroy market progression and sustainability of companies. (Sudler, 2013).
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
In todays digital age it had become easier to download and distribute media. Many individuals have continued to evaluate whether or not punishments for media piracy are harsh enough. This essay will discuss the strengths and weakness of allowing the punishment to stay the same for media piracy. It will also demonstrate why increasing the punishment will have a negative effect on society.
Anyone who owns a computer that has a reliable internet connection can potentially download a torrent client and participate in peer-to-peer file sharing. Using a web browser to download files from websites is a lot different than downloading files from peers because instead of obtaining the files from a web server you are obtaining the files directly from ordinary computers like your own, hence the name peer-to-peer (P2P). A lot of people use P2P file sharing as way of sharing and obtaining copyrighted material. In this paper I’ll go over some of the details of P2P file sharing, why it’s such a big issue for
In 2013, game developing company Greenheart Games released their game, Game Dev Tycoon, alongside a cracked version of it “on the number one torrent sharing site.” This revealed that within a day of the game release, 93.6% of users playing their game were using the cracked version that they uploaded” (Klug). These stats are terrifying when trying to make a successful business on a digital platform. As a majority of industries make some part of their revenue off of the internet, piracy is something that must decrease in order for more businesses to make profit on this relatively new platform. Piracy has been a concern for much longer than the internet as “[i]nventions such as the photocopier, CD burners, and the Internet has made the copying of books, music, and movies inexpensive and easy and the enforcement of copyright more difficult” (Adermon). This has only increased due to the accessibility of the internet. But in order to decrease piracy, one must first understand why it happens in the first place. The main reasons for people to resort to piracy rather than the legitimate acquisition of products is that piracy is free, piracy is more convenient, and piracy is anonymous. There are many ways to try to counteract these positives of pirating, but with such a large number of pirated digital goods, how is it even possible to lower the effects of piracy?