File Sharing and Online Piracy: How Does it Effect Copyrights? Is it Ethical?

1522 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Piracy in Music Industry

As you upload the most recent (and most spectacular) new Lady Gaga album Art Pop into your ITunes Library, you scale back and take a long look at your devoted collection. You’ve collected nearly 2000 songs, 150 movies, and 200 books. From the Beatles to Deadmau3, Miley Cyrus to Nirvana, you have every type of music you could possibly imagine. Worst of all, you don’t even listen to a tenth of it! You’ve collected all this media for an outrageous price too: Absolutely Nothing. After 2 and half years of constant file sharing through Limewire, Frostwire, and Vuze, You’ve easily transcended beyond a four or five thousand dollar threshold of Pirated Media. In the end though, your actions do come with a cost. When the federal government discovers your malicious activity, you’re charged with thousands of dollars in copyright infringement fines, court case settlements, and more years in federal prison then you could have ever imagined. “What have I done wrong? Am I really hurting anyone?” you ask yourself. Peer-to-peer file sharing is nearly a 15 year old action that creates a connection between computers across the world to share any types of files and information. The creation of Napster in 1999, drastically lower music sales, laws against theft in the United States, and a growing understanding of the file sharing world all contribute to one shared idea: File sharing a torrent downloading is entirely unethical because it takes money away from the rights holders of media and abuses their rights to their own intellectual property, and is a blunt act of theft and dissidence for the law (Old Napster).
Napster was the original peer-to-peer file sharing service that was released in 1999 so that people could share the music files they had on t...

... middle of paper ...

...>.
Rojas, Fabio. "the history of recording industry sales, 1973-2010." orgtheorynet. N.p., 13 July 2011. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. .
Rojas, Fabio. the history of recording industry sales, 1973-2010. 2011. The History of Recording Industry Sales, 1973-2010, United States of America. http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-history-of-recording-industry-sales-1973-2010/. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
"Theft Overview." Findlaw. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. .
Tyson, Jeff. "HowStuffWorks "How the Old Napster Worked"." HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. .
"theft." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. .

Show More
Related

  • The Napster Lawsuit in the U.S.

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Napster is a virtual community, which consists of music news and chat-rooms, the main feature it offers is an easy way to download MP3's (music files). This controversial service has brought the lawsuit to Napster. Napster allows its subscribers to download the music files without charge. It is not however, from Napster that the subscribers get these files. It is from each other. The users share their hard drives so that other users can download any of their music files that they want.

    Read More

  • Teen Music Piracy: Innocent or Guilty

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Peer to Peer Technology and Copyright

    6523 Words  | 14 Pages

    Recently, there has been a series of copyright infringement litigations against Internet businesses that are involved with unauthorized distribution of music files. The US recording industry claims to lose three million dollars per year because of piracy. A report predicted an estimated 16 percent of all US music sales, or 985 million dollars would be lost due to online piracy by 2002 (Foege, 2000; cited from McCourt & Burkart, 2003) Even though this claim has to be taken with caution, as it is based on false assumption that if copyright laws were strictly enforced, audio pirates would become buyers, it is apparent that audio piracy grew to a worrisome level for the record industry. (Gayer & Shy, 2003)

    Read More

  • Online Music Distribution In A Post-Napster World

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before the 1990’s, if people want to listen to music, they just visit a music store and pick up a CD and then put it into a stereo equipment. However, the development of MP3 file format gradually changed the way people listen to music. This format lets everyone download music easily and it can be converted to CD as well. But, there is still a problem: searching MP3 files on the internet is maddening and people seldom can find the music they want. Therefore, the birth of Napster solved this problem, creating a virtual music community in which music fans could use the Web as a “swap meet” for music files. More importantly, Napster is easy to use and it’s free, which expands the range of audience in age. Bandwidth also contributed to Napster’s success. The greater the bandwidth, the faster the file can be transferred. So, Napster really changed the way people listen to music, discover music and interact with music.

    Read More

  • The Future of P2P Technology and Music

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since 1999, the situation around music has been changed drastically. In that year, the novel software “Napster” was released. With this software, people became able to get any file they want easily, sometimes illegally. Some musicians and people in the entertainment industry have tried to exterminate that P2P “Peer to Peer” technology. But it looks as if their efforts are in vain. People are going to use P2P technology more and it might as well become the official way to handle music distribution. The music industry should rather take advantage of the technology than keep trying to exterminate it.

    Read More

  • Online File Sharing and Internet Piracy

    1780 Words  | 4 Pages

    The United States of America is a free country, then why shouldn’t the internet be free? Why should we have restrictions placed on what we can and cannot do on the internet? Every day, millions of users share files on the internet through numerous online sources. Whether they download music, movies, or software, online file-sharing can give people access to a plentiful amount of information. These files are often free and easily accessible by anyone. The practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information represents file sharing (Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing and Copyright Infringement: Are You Vulnerable?). Conversely many people see file sharing as unlawful. The reproduction or distribution of any copyrighted digital media or information defines internet piracy. Many people see downloading copyright files such as music, movies, books, and software as illegal. Music files, some of the first types of files to be reproduced and distributed through internet sources, contain the file extension .mp3. Several popular file sharing programs were developed in the 1990s and facilitated internet piracy. Big industries try to combat file sharing to help increase their revenue, however internet piracy actually increases revenue of industries and has numerous other benefits (What Is Internet Piracy?). The copy and distribution of digital files increased due to technology (Torr). Internet piracy, considered a problem all over the world, stands as difficult to stop along with other kinds of piracy (What Is Internet Piracy?). Anything can be digitalized and once something becomes digitalized it will be shared all over the internet (Torr). Canadian and European laws allow for the downloading of copyright files for personal us...

    Read More

  • The Napster and Grokster Cases: Differences and Similarities

    883 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the text A Gift of Fire, Napster “opened on the Web in 1999 as a service that allowed its users to copy songs in MP3 files from the hard disks of other users” (Baase, 2013, p. 192, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). Napster was, however, “copying and distributing most of the songs they traded without authorization” (A Gift of Fire, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). This unauthorized file sharing resulted in a lawsuit - “eighteen record companies sued for contributory infringement claiming that Napster users were blatantly infringing copyrights by digitally reproducing and distributing music without a license” (Communications Law: Liberties, Restraints and the Modern Media, 2011, p. 359).

    Read More

  • Technology And Change: The Effects On Music And The Artists Who Create It

    1660 Words  | 4 Pages

    Introduction: In the past, music has been a costly business, where only people with a lot of money could enter and be successful in the industry. Changes in the music industry, coupled with new computer technology, have made it much easier for people without a lot of money to compose, produce, and distribute their creations. In order to get a better understanding of the music industry in comparison to 2014, one has to look at its history. There were many things that happened from the 1980’s onward, and they brought on a significant impact towards the music industry.

    Read More

  • Digital Distribution And Music Industry

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provided—directories, effectively—while actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.

    Read More

  • Internet Piracy: Theft of Intellectual Property

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Is Downloading Free Music from the Internet Legal?

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first online peer to peer file-sharing application was Napster. Napster allowed people to copy music from their CDs onto their computers in mp3 format. They then allowed other members of Napster to download these songs onto their computers. Once this caught on, millions of people were downloading thousands of songs a day. And as you can imagine, this did not make the record companies happy with the idea that people were getting their music for free instead of buying the CD. It also caused a problem with some of the recording artists. Most notably Metallica.

    Read More

  • Digital Piracy

    369 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Illegal Downloading "is" Stealing

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Against Illegal Downloading

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    Napster is a company that developed the so-called peer-to-peer technology that lets people search and retrieve music files directly from one another's personal computers. When Napster first came out, millions of internet users worldwide were illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music, videos, images, and software for free. After being vilified by the entertainment industry, which claims that Napster and any similar programs could make piracy of almost any digital work unstoppable, and many court battles, Napster was ordered by court to be shutdown in 2000. The technology has been praised as a revolutionary development for the Internet—unaware of the problems that would arise from such practices. However, the termination of Napster was not enough, months later, dozens of new, like programs were being developed and used. And since Napster, not much has been done to stop these latest downloading programs.

    Read More

  • Illegal Downloading of Music on the Internet

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    Now let’s flash forward back to present day when all that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead of saving of our money and begging our parents to take us to the store to buy a newly released album, we simply get on our computer, go to a website and download the album for free. It doesn’t matter what website it is, whether it is Limewire, Frostwire, or Pirate Bay, people will be happy with their free album. There are still some kids to this day who enjoy going to the store and buying and listening to an album the old-fashioned way but we have to wonder how bad things will get as more and more people are getting equipped with the Internet and the use of downloading music. While the internet might be making life easier for all, the growing use of downloading music on the Internet is growing into a detrimental and illegal problem.

    Read More

More about File Sharing and Online Piracy: How Does it Effect Copyrights? Is it Ethical?

Open Document