Piracy is the practice of illegally reproducing and sharing information on the internet, such as music or software. Even though piracy is illegal in the United States of America, it still continues to persists and be successful despite the many legislations and plans developed to try to put a permanent stop to it. In the article “You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You,” it was stated that “It’s not moral, it’s not right, but it’s there and it’s easy and there’s no one to stop you from doing it, and never will be. It’s like being placed in a store full of every DVD in existence. There are no employees, no security guards, and when you take a copy of movie, another one materializes in its place, so you’re not actually taking anything.“ If there is always going to be an opportunity for someone to easily open a browser and download their favorite movie or song for free, how do you expect piracy to ever come to an end especially seeing that there isn’t anyone online to track everyone in the world committing the act of piracy and punishing them. It’s impossible, but instead of trying to understand why people in general participate in the act of piracy, many companies would rather spend millions of dollars to develop legislations and crack down on a few sites that provide the ability to do piracy. The reality is even if in some miraculous way piracy becomes permanently banned, the internet will come up with something new. It’s the same concept as if you tell a child no, they will plot/scheme and find another way to get what they want. Should that be the case? No, but it’s the truth of the society that we live in today. Another important argument made in that article is that “The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for free?” It is hilarious to think that movie studios believe increasing ticket prices will make people not want to illegally download movies online when its actually encouraging them to want to commit piracy at a higher rate. If things were more affordable, many people wouldn’t feel the need to illegally download things online. Why pay $15 to sit in a theatre with other strangers who can disturb you during the movie when you can download the same movie for free and watch it in the comfort of your home? It is the same concept as to why people sneak food into the theatre because popcorn and other snacks at the theater are overpriced. People don’t feel bad about participating in piracy because they know that everyone is doing it and compared to other harmful crimes, piracy is nothing. A powerful statement made was “Treat your customers with respect , and they’ll do the same to you. And that is how you fight piracy.” I agree with this because if customers/consumers don’t feel respected and appreciated, they won’t care about respecting your products or second guess illegally downloading them, resulting in your company losing money.
Apr 16