Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Piracy

Online piracy is illegal, it affects people all over he world and has many views about it. The internet is a place of anonymity, people can do things they cannot normally do, they can look at news from sources other than those from their country. They can learn, watch, read, and listen to new things. But under all of this the anonymity is useful for some, online piracy is the act of illegally downloading content such as movies, games, or t.v shows of the internet. Piracy is a global issue because it can affect the revenue of an artist, company, or actor. Online piracy is basically theft of intellectual property, it is causing companies to lose revenue, but it offers that intellectual property to be seen by millions that would not have normally seen it


There are two sides to online piracy:
The first side to online piracy is that it should be stopped, this is the view of many congressmen in the United States, they think that it is stealing from the producers of the product. Many people want to pass SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which will shut down all sites that have any illegal content, but in the process it will shut down huge sites, such as Wikipedia or YouTube. Many people online are against SOPA, but they have no way to express it other than online.

The second side to online piracy is that it shouldn't be stopped, some game developers allow their games to be illegally downloaded to give the players a demo of sorts, they are expecting however that the player will buy the game afterwards. Also if you live in a different country, and cannot access a certain movie or game unless you pay a huge amount of money, that is not fair. But even if those people in those countries don't normally buy music or movies, then does the industry really lose any revenue? No, because that demographic wouldn't buy the movie either way, so they don't lose any revenue whatsoever.

I think that Piracy is not acceptable and should have more laws restricting it, there is proof that piracy affects the economy in that it costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 jobs annually in the U.S. I don't think that we should act as drastically as passing SOPA, but instead take smaller steps to minimize online piracy globally. This can be done by shutting down smaller sites. Libraries lend books to people, it causes a loss of revenue for publishing companies, but there is no act to close libraries. I am not saying it is the same thing, but it is similar, it is like “lending” the illegal software or media

But in the end, piracy is illegal and should stay that way, it will not cause loss of revenue if there is much less of it. There are many problems in the world today, and piracy shouldn't be one of them, it can be resolved and doesn't need drastic measures such as SOPA.


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