The Cause Of Internet Piracy

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Internet piracy is defined as: “Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copy right law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned" (Dowling v., 1985). Shawn Fanning was an 18-year-old collage drop out but he was not like any other regular teenage collage drop out. He created one of the most amazing file sharing networks (Napster Peer-2-Peer application), it allowed you to search the name of the artist or song and download files that were being shared by people for free and that is when internet piracy began (http://www.cracked.com/funny-4101-the-history-internet-piracy/).In 2001 Napster was shut down but it was too late and other file sharing sites had spread including KaZaA and Morpheus. Today almost a third of UK internet users who stream or download music, TV and films did so through internet piracy in the quarter to the end of January, with almost 400 files digitally printed in a three month period according the the media regulator (Mack Sweney , 2013). Many laws are being broken when it come to piracy such as the U.S. copyright law, but people just seem to not care. Music and movie online piracy has become a major issue that is not only affecting the music and movie industry in a financial way but also causing ethical issues.
When it comes to piracy there are many ethical issues in the music industry. For many years the industry has been battling with music piracy, but the industry is fighting a battle that they are going to lose a...

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...e in a major way. Some people argue that piracy should not be illegal, it should be encouraged and more avenues for getting content online should open up, but if that was to happen many of these creative industries will be forced to shut down because of the low income. High school students are the first people that need to be approached for the piracy issue, as they have the highest numbers for downloading and streaming online, but they do not need to be approached in a way of telling them what is right from wrong they should be approached in a way that would make them care. They could be asked how would they feel if their favorite actor or actress stopped acting? Or how would they feel if their favorite singer stopped producing music? They need to understand that they can lose these talented people because their record company has shut down because of low revenue.

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