Piracy is Wrong

The past decade has offered us technologies that have never existed before and has made downloading and pirating extremely easy. There are numerous ways to share files on the internet, but the number one way to download anything today is peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing. This allows anyone to go out and buy music, video, or programs etcetera; download it to their computer and share it with the world. Often times this sharing is illegal, not always, but most often. When it is illegal it is bad and affects many people involved in producing these shared files. Plain and simple piracy is wrong and P2P sharing needs to be controlled.

What is being pirated is copyrighted material without the consent of the owner or producer of the material.  This is very common within the music world right now especially. It is stated in Lawrence Lessig’s book that, the recording industry estimates that it loses about $4.6 billion every year to piracy. That is an outrageous amount of money, anyone would agree. What happens is private people either download music off of ITunes or purchase a CD's; put the files on the computer; then through massive P2P sharing sites distribute the content. There is no justification that can explain or make this massive sharing as well as huge profit loss right. It is plain and simple stealing.

Another industry that is massively affected by this piracy is the movie industry. Lessig says the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) estimates that it loses $3 billion annually worldwide to piracy. People will rent movies or buy movies and do the same thing as music sharers do; distribute the content over P2P sharing sites. These are sites such as the Piratebay, Limewire, Frostwire, and many more. The piracy that goes on does not just affect the major corporations, but also everyone involved in the industry, for example: actors, camera-men, extras, producers, and set-designers. The industry and everyone in it is affected as a whole and this can eventually lead to major problems, like mass-unemployment and strikes.

Not all pirating is wrong though. Some sharing is very rewarding for the distributers of the content. Lessig describes four different kinds of content that is shared, the fourth one also the non-illegal one is: “there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away”. Lessig also describes a great example of this where science fiction author Cory Doctorow, released his first novel on both the internet and bookstores hoping to gain popularity. Others follow this example as well especially in the music industry to gain popularity before they become mainstream and big in the music world. Lilly Allen started on MySpace and released songs before she signed with a record label. That is how she gained her popularity. These are two examples and there are not a large amount of artists that have successfully done this and also despite the fact, it does not change anything when it comes to illegally sharing.

Ultimately what is happening is that massive file sharing through P2P is killing certain industries that have existed and brought us so much for years. The motivation for new artists and movies to arise I dwindling rapidly and something needs to be done to protect the rights of artists and creators in the movie industry. It is obvious that there is a huge amount of people worldwide who enjoy this entertainment and would like to see and have more of it in years to come; therefore something needs to be done before something bad or permanent happens to these industries.