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Essays about piracy introduction and conclusion
Essays about piracy introduction and conclusion
Essays about piracy introduction and conclusion
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KaZaA is Ethical and Legal
INTRODUCTION
The Internet is undoubtedly one of the greatest innovations of the past hundred years. The Internet provides a means for people all over the world to share information readily and rapidly. Like all technological innovations, the Internet has provided a better means for information to be exchanged. The down side of this is that the Internet can be used to transmit illegal information more easily.
KaZaA is an Australian company that offers a means for internet users all over the world to exchange files of all types, with one another. Many users have been using KaZaA as a means to exchange music, movie, and program files, which is illegal based on the laws of many nations. The recording industry of the United States claims that they are losing money, as many users are using KaZaA to distribute music freely. Currently the United States is trying to sue Sharman Networks, the company that distributes KaZaA. It is not right for the United States to sue KaZaA both ethically and legally. First of all KaZaA is a company outside of the United States who has created a software program that allows the exchange of files. The problem is that people are using the software to illegally exchange files, so it is the users who are violating laws, not the distributor of the software. If the United States wanted to go after the source of the problem, they should go after the people who are using the software illegally, and not those who created the means to trade software illegally.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
KaZaA is a file exchange program, that is operated by an Australian company that is incorporated out of Vanuatu, a small pacific island nation. KaZaA provides a means for people to exchange fil...
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...Millennium Copyright Act, Berkeley Technology Law Journal vol. 16, 2001 (pp. 855-876).
5. Woody, Todd. The Race to Kill Kazaa, Wired Magazine, Issue 11.02, February 2003, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/kazaa_pr.html
6. Flags courtesy of ITA's Flags of All Countries used with permission.
ENDNOTES
1 Todd Woody, The Race to Kill Kazaa, Wired Magazine, Issue 11.02, February 2003,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/kazaa_pr.html
2 Roy Mark, Judge: Kazaa Can Be Sued in U.S., Internet News, 13 January 2003,
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/1568591
3 Paul Hardwick, 2002, Privacy Digest, 7 October 2002,
http://www.privacydigest.com/2002/10/07
4 Ross Buckly, Overseas Law: Erosion of the rule of law in the United States, The
Australian Law Journal vol. 76, March 2002, 161.
5 Hardwick.
6 Woody.
7 Mark.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants to let the public know that this file sharing that is going on is illegal. The only way to stop this is to start lawsuits. The RIAA has been making attempts for a couple years to inform the public that file sharing is illegal, but now that nothing has happened appropriate action needs to take place (RIAA 1).
Before the present time of computers and various media player technology, trading music files on the internet was practically unheard of. Today MP3 music files have become file format that is widely “swapped” over the internet. The problem with trading MP3's is that it violates copyright laws. However, this hasn’t stopped the tens of millions of file sharing software users who continue swap MP3’s. MP3 piracy is a costly business for many companies, and the disadvantages outweigh the advantages of “P2P” file sharing. File sharing is a costly, illegal practice that hurts not only the consumers, but the artists as well.
Bruno, Antony. “P2P Is Down, But Piracy Has New Outlets, Study Says.” Billboard, 9 Apr 2005.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have had a staggering growth in the past few years. Since Napster, dozens of P2P networks have been created in its imitation. Due to the growing accessibility of broadband, which increases the speed of downloads, P2P networks generate nearly 1.8 billion downloads per month. Popularity and acceptance is still continually growing.
The music industry has had problems with computer piracy for many years now. There have been many programs devoted to giving out free music. Many of these programs are well know, but still very hard to stop. Napster, Kazaa, and the newest program, myTunes Redux are the most popular programs for music sharing. This essay will explain all about these main programs which allow free music to be shared all over the world.
It is not unusual to find hostile response of audio-visual industry against a new copying technology. Every time when a new copying technology was invented and introduced into the market, the industry responded argued that the new technology would cause significant damage to them by promoting piracy; It was true with the cases of Xerox, audio tape recorder, video tape recorder, compact disc (CD), and finally with the online file sharing through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service. Usually, introduction of new copying technology led to series of legal disputes just like what we are witnessing in the current case of the Record Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) lawsuits against KaZaA and its individual members. Quite contrary to the industry’s usual arguments, however, new technologies eventually have proved additional revenues of profit for them so far. (Bettig, 1996)
Music piracy is the process of copying, or file sharing copyrighted materials illegally. Music theft hurts the artists that bring music to your ears due to the fact that they’re not receiving a decent amount of income because their songs are obviously getting stolen. A survey has identified that 70 percent of all 18 to 29 year olds have pirated music, TV shows, or movies. “Music has been compact and easy to reproduce since the days of sheet music. It is, moreover, intensely social: People want to share it with each other, whether by sending a YouTube URL in the 21st century, trading Grateful Dead tapes in the 20th, or copying sheet music for other singers in the church choir in the 19th” (Berlatsky). Another poll found that 46 percent of all Americans have engaged in piracy (Anderson). Back in the 1980s, music piracy was slightly spotted, when people created things called mixed tapes, however making these did not cost the industry much money. Cases of music piracy highly increased after the compact disc (CD) was created in 1982. One major case of music piracy was affiliated with the heavy metal band Metallica on April 13, 2000. Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster due to many copyright infringements, and racketeering. The heavy metal band found $10 million worth of damages which is roughly $100,000 per downloaded song. NetPD evaluated Napster’s illegal program, and produced a list of 335,435 users that were downloading and sharing the band’s albums.
Schwartz, John (July 19, 2011). "Open-Access Advocate Is Arrested for Huge ……….Download". New York Times. Retrieved April 25,
Along with the development of a file format (MP3) to store digital audio recordings, came one of the new millennium’s most continuous debates – peer-to-peer piracy – file sharing. Internet companies such as Napster and Grokster became involved in notable legal cases in regards to copyright laws in cyberspace. These two cases are similar in nature, yet decidedly different. In order to understand the differences and similarities, one should have an understanding of each case as well as the court’s ruling.
Nowadays, it is extremely easy to download free music from the internet. All someone has to do is download some peer to peer file-sharing application such as Kazaa, Edonkey, Blubster, or Bearshare, and you have unlimited access to download just about anything that you please. But is downloading free music from one of these applications legal? I think that it is. This paper will look at both sides of the argument.
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.
There are a lot of people who download music and movies without paying. The main reason that this is such a big issue is because piracy substitutes for a legitimate transaction; for example, someone who would have originally bought a DVD of the movie Young Guns but instead downloads it for free on The Pirate Bay. In this case, the person pirating the movie or song would never have bought it. This happens frequently if the “pirate” lives in a relatively poor country, like China, and is simply unable to afford to pay for the films and music he or she downloa...
They would just reply, "Kazaa is bad about downloading viruses." Therefore, from that point on I have been careful about what I have downloaded. About a month later, my family got a new computer and I was so excited that I could start downloading again. Viruses can get on a person's computer many different ways, such as e-mail and file sharing. For example, I got my virus through music file sharing and not through e-mail. Occasionally everyone hears about a virus that has caused major damage and it always seems like there are not very many, but in all reality, there are more than people think.
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.
Knorr, Caroline, “Illegal Downloads: When Sharing Becomes Stealing” (November 19, 2010) https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/illegal-downloads-when-sharing-becomes-stealing (March 31, 2014)