Zak Woodward: Movie Piracy Persuasive

Zak Woodward

Period 1

Lomonte

12/12/10

Movie Piracy Persuasive Essay

            Piracy of movies is a growing trend threatening to usurp the movie industry. In the past year alone it has grown by 16%, furthermore, those currently in the practice have no intention of letting up according to new studies by the MPAA. If movie production is to survive as a legitimate industry, movie pirates must be shut down.

            Each year the movie industry loses an estimated 1.3 billion dollars to these pirates. However, there are legitimate concerns from consumers pushing them to steal: rising ticket prices, the ability to watch a movie before it is released in theaters, and the increasing ease with which ordinary people can pirate movies with compression and broadband technologies.

            On the other hand online piracy of any kind is illegal and the risks of federal felonies and jail time far out way the risk of saving $20 by not going to the theaters. The feds are getting tired of this problem and are cracking down, in the month of October alone 9 sites were shut down for selling pirated movies. Those who are caught cheating the law are being slapped with federal convictions, whopping fines, and jail time. Movie piracy, innocent though it may seem, is stealing and the government has taken the position ‘if you are out there, we will find you.’

            Movie pirates are very difficult to catch do to the ability to download from websites anonymously, so that there is virtually no trace for investigators to follow. The government’s only weapon against piracy is fear. When it catches a few people who were clumsy, they pounce on them, handing down federal felonies, ridiculous fines, and extended jail sentences to act as a deterrent for the many pirates still out there. So every time they click their mouse the story of the guy who got life in prison for stealing ‘The Love Guru’ is in the back of their mind.

            The only thing we really can do is hope that people do the right thing.

Sam Mitchell: Music Piracy Persuasive

Sam Mitchell                                                                                                   Mitchell 1

Mrs. Lomonte

English

December 9, 2010

Music Piracy is wrong

Music piracy is something that is constantly happening throughout not only the United States, but throughout the whole world. It is the stealing of copyrighted music by downloading via the Internet or from applications that can be installed from the Internet. Millions of people are doing this, so the question is brought up- is music piracy a good thing, and is it okay to do? The answer to that question: NO, music piracy is not only illegal, but it steals money from the music makers and producers, which can potentially put them out of business.

If you ask a large number of people who download copyrighted music for free, odds are that only a tiny amount would not know that that act (piracy) is actually illegal. The majority of file-sharers (another term for music pirates) however know for a fact that what they are doing is illegal. The majority of these file-sharers also would not ever steal something from an actual store. So, why do they believe that it is perfectly fine to steal over the Internet? The consequences for music piracy are almost exactly the same as stealing from a store. The downloader can be fined, the amount depending on how much music was actually downloaded. According to the RIAA, the minimum fine for piracy is $750 per song. Pirates can even be imprisoned if they steal masses of music. The RIAA flat out said: “It’s a criminal act… When you make illegal copies of someone’s creative work, you are stealing and breaking the law.” They also say: “Criminal penalties for first-

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time offenders can be as high as five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.” This shows that this is a serious offense, and has its severe consequences.

Aside from the fact that music piracy is illegal, it also hurts the profit of music makers, producers, and record companies immensely. Studies show that $12.5 billion is lost annually due to music piracy. The workers of many music companies are also affected by this loss of money: they have smaller salaries and some even lose their job. The RIAA says that around 71,060 jobs in the music industry have been lost in the past year due to file sharing.

Music piracy is a serious problem in our world today, and it needs to be put to a stop. People should realize that it is illegal, with many consequences, and it affects the music industry in a very horrible way.

Quinn Kravitz: Music Piracy

Music Piracy Opinion
File sharing in general and music “piracy” in particular is a tender subject and in my humble opinion, not as much of a big deal as the outraged cries of the outraged record companies would have you think. When the word “piracy” is thrown about you may get mental pictures of angry old men, skin toughened by water and salt, with blood in their gums and swords at their sides. However, the kind of pirates involved in (music) file sharing usually fall into the category of regular people who don’t like paying exorbitant fees for music, not swindling merchants of sin. These regular people, including artists themselves, are subject to pure fury from record companies, and in cases that are admittedly few in far between, charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading a handful of songs. The treatment of these “pirates” is both bizarre and frustrating. If anything it makes us want to raid the ports of these record companies with renewed passion, plundering song upon song, lighting fire to whole cellars of albums, and taking musicians life works for ransom. In reality, music is meant to be shared by whoever wants it and shouldn’t be masked by greed. Paying over a dollar per song is just silly, and any smart human being wouldn’t subject themselves to such tomfoolery. Luckily the pirates have the upper hand as there are thousands of different ways to get music for free, but the illegality of the whole fiasco is absurd.

Charging money for Mp3 files is simply wrong. Most of the musicians aren’t affected in the slightest. They make money from touring, merchandise sales, record sales etc. Record companies just want to make more and more money off of their prize hens, and when people get fed up with it, label said offenders as criminals. Free music is a great help when it comes to spreading peoples tastes and actually encouraging them to support the artist. “…a little piracy can be a good thing. Sure, O.K., I ripped the audio of the Shins' Phantom Limb off a YouTube video. But on the strength of that minor copyright atrocity, I legally bought two complete Shins albums and shelled out for a Shins concert. The legit market feeds off the black market. Music execs just need to figure out how to live with that.” (Lev Grossman, Time Magazine). Lev Grossman gives a fantastic example of what goes on all the time. If some piracy was simply allowed, then users would surely discover new music they like, and likely help the execs profit by spending money on things related to the band that PIRACY DISCOVERED FOR THEM. Another example of the monopolies on the 60 billion dollar music industry is the fact that iTunes, a popular mp3 downloading program, only lets the user convert its files onto Apple products. Small things like this all build up and push many people to simply getting the same quality of music for free. After all if a restaurant served an exclusive recipe for chicken pot pie but only made it available if you agreed to eat nowhere else and to pay 50 dollars per pie, why would you not go to the vendor outside, giving out pies for free…recipe and all. I want my pie.
In an interview with cbsnews.com, Seam Parker (creator of failed mp3 distributor Napster) estimated that “4 to 10 trillion songs have been downloaded illegally as opposed to 4 billion or so legally.” This war on piracy is an absolute failure and waste of time. The greed of these companies should simply shame them into giving up. This is as if they sold cocaine legally but found a way to illegalize the exact same thing sold by anyone else. People need to step up and fight against these companies who are so motivated by money that they sue random Americans for ridiculous amounts of compensation. Their rampant run of monopolizing and overreacting is useless and has already been put down by an army. An army of people like you. An army of pirates. It’s time that music is made legal to download for free, the longer this is stalled, the angrier we get, and the worse these companies look. When record labels charge fees such as 750 dollars per song illegally downloaded by the “culprits” (Harper vs. Maverick Recording Company) they look the biggest a-holes in the world. Give it up. We won.

Zak Woodward: Movie Piracy

Zak Woodward                                                                                                           Woodward1

Period 1

Lomonte

12/6/10

Movie Piracy

Movie Piracy is a growing threat, according a recent study conducted by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). According to this study almost 25% of internet users from eight different countries had downloaded at least one movie illegally, and an astonishing 69% of responders did not think that music/movie piracy was a big deal.

Not only has 1/4 of responders downloaded a movie online, another 17% said they expected to start within the next year. Furthermore over half of those who had previously downloaded a movie said that they planned to continue the practice.

There are multiple causes pushing consumers towards illegal downloading first, broadband and compression technologies make downloading movies easier than it ever has been before. Along with high ticket prices, a wide variety of online films was cited as another factor pushing consumers to download. This has become so simple a process that movies can be downloaded even before they are released in theaters.

In response to this growing trend, multiple agencies including the MPAA are cracking down. The feds shut down nine piracy sites according to the NY times, and the MPAA has launched an ad campaign in response to the 3 billion dollars in revenue being lost annually to movie pirates.

However do to the difficulty in catching these thieves; federal courts are pushing for a maximum sentence for those few they do catch to dissuade pirates still at large. According to the

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LA Times an Irvine man pled guilty to a felony for downloading a single movie before it was released in theaters.

            This is a serious problem that has everybody in the movie industry worried about what it could mean for their bottom line. The simple solution that keeps the government happy and you out of trouble is to stay as far away from it as possible, but ultimately it comes down to the internet user and whether or not they want to take the risk. And right now that risk is paying off because there is not a lot the government can do about it.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/116842/mpaa_movie_piracy_is_the_new_plague.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/01/business/la-fi-ct-piracy-20100701

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/02/movie-piracy-crime-and-punishment-in-one-lousy-upload.html

Grant Phillips: Movie Piracy

Movie Piracy

Grant Phillips, Period 1

            Movie piracy has become one of the biggest issues the motion picture industry has ever had to face. Movie piracy is the act of selling, acquiring, or distributing copyrighted films. There are several forms of movie piracy including illegally copying movies from television, showing movies without the proper authorization, and the illegal downloading of movies from the internet. Movie piracy costs the movie industry billions of dollars in profits every year. The Motion Picture Association of America claims that movie piracy cost the major studios approximately $6.1 billion per year in profits.

            As a result of all the losses of profits and continuing movie piracy, copyright laws have been established to attempt to limit the amount of illegal movie piracy committed, as well as to punish those who commit them. These laws help to state when movies can and cannot be shown legally. If someone is caught breaking these laws there are severe punishments. Violating these laws is a federal crime that can lead to large fines and even jail time. The people most likely to be caught committing movie piracy are those who download movies off of the internet.

            Movie piracy started with people using camcorders to record movies shown in a theater. The sound and quality of these recordings were very poor. They then began using more sophisticated techniques to increase the quality of sound of these recordings, and the pirated copies of today are much better than they used to be.

            Movie piracy is not something to be taken lightly. Copyright infringement calls for some fairly harsh punishments, such as hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines or imprisonment. One may think there is nothing wrong with downloading movies illegally because it seems like everyone is doing it, but is it really worth it considering the risks that one could possibly be facing?

Sam Mitchell: Music Piracy

Sam Mitchell                                                                                                   Mitchell 1

Mrs. LoMonte

English

4 December 2010

                                                            Music Piracy

Music piracy is one of the most used forms of piracy. Millions across the world download songs from the hottest artists without paying one penny. Is this right? After all the hard work and time put into making music, should one be allowed to download the music completely for free? Some of you may ask, what even is piracy? According to thinkquest.org, “piracy is the illegal copying of copyrighted material”. Lately, the United States government has been working extremely hard on shutting down many of the music piracy websites and servers.

Before the crackdown of piracy websites, people were constantly downloading free music. There were and still are tons of ways to do this. One of the most common ways was to download an application that is similar to i-Tunes, except users could obtain all of the music they desired for free. Some of the most popular of these file-sharing applications are LimeWire, Bearshare, and Morpheus. This software works by connecting your computer to another person’s computer, who has the same software. Files are shared between the two computers, and then downloaded. This is where the term “file-sharing” comes from. LimeWire, which is probably the most used file-sharing software, has recently been shut down by the US LimeWire has apparently caused the music industry to lose millions of dollars. Some argue that these file-sharing communities are actually good, but the statistics show it’s only a good thing for the downloader, who illegally

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saves hundreds to thousands of dollars. In fact, the guardian.com says that in 2009, US recorded music sales fell 7.7 billion dollars. This happened at a time that the music piracy industry hit a growth spurt.

Although the government is trying its best to crackdown on these music piracy websites and applications, people are constantly discovering and creating new ways of downloading music illegally. People are beginning to use converter sites, where one takes a YouTube video and puts it into the website, which then converts the audio to a downloadable file. These websites are just as harmful to artists and record companies as the previously mentioned ones. Although the US government has not began to shut down these websites, it is certain that they will soon be banned or strictly observed to make sure that no copyrighted music is downloaded.

The future of music piracy is unfortunately a strong one. In no way can the government crack down on all of the websites and software that offer illegal downloads of copyrighted music. The people who download music through this software have to be the difference makers. If people stop file sharing, this whole illegal industry can be halted and eventually put out of business.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625209,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=music%20file%20sharing&st=cse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/27/limewire-shut-down

http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0313005/Music%20Piracy.htm