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The Impact Of Piracy On The Internet Essay

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The Impact of Piracy

According to the Motion Pictures Association of America website, A pirate is anyone who sells, acquires, copies or distributes copyrighted materials without permission. Over the past ten years, technology has greatly advanced, and with these technological advances, digital file sharing easier than ever. One aspect of these advances is faster Internet connection, which has made it easier to download large files in the matter of minutes. Whereas in the past majority of people had dial-up Internet services which in most cases the download rate was no more than 10 kilobytes per second. Some Internet providers today offer speeds up to one gigabyte per second, which to put in perspective; a DVD size is usually around 4 gigabytes, so technically someone could download an exact replica of a DVD in a matter of minutes if not seconds. But even in the dial-up era, internet piracy was an issue, where programs such as Napster made it easy for people to share files with people all over the world. Napster, was the first well known peer to peer sharing software where users were able to directly download songs from other users. Napster surfaced in 1999 and most internet users embraced it open arms as they were able to download their favorite songs at the comfort of their home for free. Napster 's reign only lasted about two years, after which the record companies caught on, and noticed that Napster was affecting their sales, and lawsuits

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