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?
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