On Illegally Downloading Protected Content
Illegally downloading music, movies, and other protected content have significantly increased. University students fined for illegally downloading protected content lessens piracy. Fining students from universities and colleges inform them that there are charges to pay for illegal activity, according to accredited universities. Creators of music, movies, or other protected content earn money back in which they have lost, with the fines that were given to those who committed the crime. University scholars are further taught about the wrongful actions of piracy and to pay for what they obtain after being punished. Fining university students decrease the chance of spyware and viruses on their computer. University and college students should be fined for illegally downloading music, movies, or other protected content.
Fines inform university students that there are consequences for illegal activity. A university validated, "Every semester multiple people at Webster are notified of their violations of copyright law" ("Illegal Downloading & File Sharing"). The people in charge of copyright infringement can track the university students and notify them, but obviously, that is still not enough to show them how unlawful piracy is. The first step authorities of the college shall take is a fair warning, then the next action would be a fine. Even if they are aware of the authorities contacting them, university students still believe they are invincible. Fines would be the proper and most effective measure for the illegal activity taking place. Furthermore, the consequences are enormous for a college student, even if they were not the one who downloaded the content.
Someone might have illegally downl...
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...pyware can affect their personal files such as important assignments that help them become successful. Clearly, the penalty for illegally downloading will progressively halt piracy.
University and college students who are fined for illegally downloading music, videos, or other protected content put a stop to the illegal activity. Creators of the music, movies, and other protected content will earn their money back after they lost it. People who oppose believe fining a student is unnecessary, but it is completely necessary in order to stop the wrong doings. Many people have had an impact economically in an uprising manner. Illegally downloading protected content such as music and other protected document are unlawful and should result in fines. Vote to fine university students against illegally downloading protected content in order to maintain an outstanding economy.
...nd a strong message that the illegal distribution of copyrighted works has consequences, but if individuals are willing to step forward on their own, we want to go the extra step and extend this option" (RIAA 1).
As many users see P2P software as just file sharing, entertainment industries and other big companies see it as copyright infringement and stealing from copyright owners without their rightful authorization or compensation. These companies complain that P2P file sharing threatens the survival of the industries and believe that there should be a law passed to protect the livelihood of the copyright holders.
Throughout time, people have resorted to stealing in order to obtain items instead of buying them. It became a problem so consequences were made. Even dating back to the Ten Commandments there were laws against stealing. Recently, theft has become a problem over the internet. Musicians and music companies have lost millions in revenue. Websites such as Napster, The Pirate Bay, and Pandora have made it extremely easy for people, specifically teens, to illegally download and or listen to music for free. Pirating music has become a problem especially because “91 percent of all new music was downloaded illegally over the Internet instead of purchased,” says Logan Lynn from Huffington Post (Lynn). Many, such as the RIAA claim that music piracy is “an ongoing and evolving challenge,” (Who) while others suggest that it is “keeping the music industry alive,” (Issacson).
A big topic that has come about is should people be prosecuted for illegally pirating online files. This includes; music, movies, programs, games and pictures. The large portion of online piracy is music. Some will argue stealing a song is as bad as stealing a car. (kain) Others will concur that song artist and record companies are losing big time bucks. Downloading music should be prosecuted as it is still stealing. Whether the person has it in their physical possession or files on their electronics it is still stealing and artist are losing money that is rightfully theirs.
Pirating is the same as stealing you are taking something that isn’t rightfully yours’ and it is because of this that prosecution should happen against these individuals. Pirating brings many problems to an individual the most important being it can bring serious penalties with the law. For instance, “is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000” (Source 3). This is the punishment for copyrighting any file such as a movie, play, song etc. The reason for these punishments to be occurring is so people can become aware of how important the problem of piracy is. Also, these punishments are inputted so it can give people a reason as to why not download a file without paying for it like you should. This type of fine can leave an individual bankrupt and having to pay this debt for the rest of their life.
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
Online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem huge: $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010 (Freakonomics). In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “can be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which in English means these figures are legitimate and that piracy really does hurt our economy.
The first reason why downloading and uploading copyrighted materials from the Internet should be legal is that downloading copyrighted materials positively affects the economy. The European Commission Joint Research Center reported that the profits of music companies would be 2% lower if uploading and downloading copyrighted materials were banned. However, music companies are able to acquire more profits despite illegal downloading because many people tend to purchase CDs or DVDs after watching or listening to copyrighted materials for free. Moreover, the research showed that people who download music illegally spent more money to buy music than people who did not download illegally. In addition, research conducted by the Swiss government informed that one-third of Swiss people downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet because personal use of copyrighted materials is legal in Switzerland. Even though there is a fact that many people can download copyrighted materials from the Internet legally in Switzerland, the amount of money that people spend to buy copyrighted materials is not f...
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 all if they illegally download or purchase copyright materials. On the other hand if everyone is doing it, why there are still some people getting caught? Not that they should not be punished, but being put into jail and paying a fine that is ridiculously impossible to pay are just practically harsh. Maybe if those people are business tycoons of counterfeit materials, but the fact that most of those people getting caught are just ordinary people trying to be practical and doing what the rest of the world is doing which is doing these “illegal” downloading or purchasing bootlegged movies and music. The government and the entertainment industries are using ordinary people as scapegoats and have been doing draconian methods in moms, children and maybe even old people by suing them for downloading or sharing pirated materials for free, because of the fact that they are having a hard time pursuing the big time “master minds,” who are making a profit out of someone else’s work.
Moreover, hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around. The industry gets its revenue from selling this content, whether it’s online or in stores, this funds new projects and allows for better products in the future. The public should be aware of this, downloading the content for free, and not buying it will decrease revenue for the companies, stopping them from undertaking future projects. “Production companies should lower the price on their products, I can’t buy music for at least 20$ per album and DVDs for 30$, I only make 200$ per month,” said George Issa, a music fan who spends most of his nights downloading music from the internet, “when there is an album or movie that I really like, I try to buy it legally, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, they are wrong making money off our backs,” he added.
It's important to understand the different software piracy channels, not just to comply with the law but also to protect against bigger economic problems like lost revenue...and lost jobs.
With the popularity of the Internet, sales for CDs, DVDs, Movies, and many other products have increased. Along with the increase of sales has brought forth an ever increasing problem of illegal media being downloaded. Programs such as Bittorent, Kazaa, and other direct-connect networking programs have allowed the transferring of such illegal media. Downloading song files from the Internet over a free peer to peer network is the moral equivalent of shoplifting music CDs from the local mall.
Besides the obvious ethical and legal issues there are other problems that many people have to deal with because of piracy. Along with any illegally downloaded material you also run the risk of exposing your computers to dangerous viruses, malware, spyware, or other unwanted software, all of these can cause your computer to run more slowly and possibly crash this can lead to costly computer repairs, loss of irreplaceable files, and in the worst cases identity theft.
At the dawn of the internet, many things such as books and text became obsolete, due to insufficient monitoring of internet activity and sites. Individuals were able to gain free access to books and publications that normally needed to be bought, or required a fee. This is something that has caused problems for booksellers and publishers. Now, as technology advances, it also begins the decline of music, software, and television industries—but something can be done before it’s too late. Illegal downloading is a problem that affects us all, either directly or indirectly. Many people do not take it too seriously. They have not realized that it is an epidemic; like a disease that keeps growing as people become more knowledgeable about computers and learn more about how software runs. People openly burn music CDs and download music and movies for friends who in turn give it to their friends; it’s a never-ending cycle on illegal practices. The problem started when Napster came out and should have ended when it was shutdown. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to stop the illegal transfer of files. It’s time someone takes full action and ends this detrimental offense.
Illegal downloading can also be known as piracy. Piracy is defined as stealing a piece of music in which the composer or recording artist did not give consent for. It is the stealing of music from people such as songwriters, musicians, record label employees, and everyone else who put hard work into it. There are some people who see no problem with downloading music from the Internet but it presents three main problems. The first problem is that the music will mostly likely not have g...