Internet Piracy and Morality

Posted by Gabriel Musselman in English 1 - Dunn on

    Internet Piracy is still a large issue in the world, and it is ever growing. As more and more laws are being considered to ban this crime, pirates are banning together to save their craft. Since my last blog post I have conducted my own research on internet piracy, as well as ask the opinions of my peers and colleagues. The results were interesting, and posed many questions for the future.
ip-infringement
ip-infringement
Out of 28 people interviewed, only half knew what internet piracy is. The other fifty percent consisted of people that either had no idea what this was or had just heard it mentioned before. What does this mean? This means that people are misinformed. The government, while right in its deliberations and conscience, has a knack for not telling both sides of the story. They fail to inform the public and to ask questions vital to the system. More than half of these people also said that piracy was wrong. If this is true, then why is so much media pirated every day?
Trent48
Trent48
Out of these people interviewed, well over half said that they or someone they knew had or still is committing internet piracy. This raises the question of morality. Why do we think piracy is wrong? Piracy takes profit away from the person or group of people that create the media we use. If you are not paying for the media you use, you can be sure that the company who produced it is. This is why people feel bad about breaking infringement laws. This is also why pirates disagree with SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA. These laws would allow for the entertainment industry to hunt down and prosecute them. If this happened, we can be sure that they would be more swift and brutal with their rulings than the government ever was. This is because internet pirates are stealing from the companies, not the government.
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tumblr_m44vusOGRu1rwq01ho1_1280
In my opinion, copyright infringement is wrong. I do not think that it is prosecutable. Kids are not sued when they shoplift from their local Walmart. The same goes for the internet. Now that U.S. laws are starting to catch up to current crimes and events, the government is getting more of a hold in the online world. I personally have pirated on several occasions, but so has most everyone in the U.S. Every time you get that new song you love from your friend, or that old album you lost a while ago from your cousin, companies and coallitions such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) consider you a criminal! I do not think this is right, but it is up to you  to decide.
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images
http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa

http://www.samizdat.li/2009/09/morality-of-internet-piracy.html

http://bigthink.com/ideas/42029

http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/online-piracy​

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