Essay on "Piracy Theft"

Essay 3 pages (1003 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Piracy Theft:

In the past few years, the morality of copying music, movies, and software has emerged as a major issue of ethical debates. Since the times of the use of cassette tapes, consumers have basically been copying and sharing music and movies freely. Piracy, especially online piracy has hit a new high because of the Internet and the emergence of Napster and torrent files. The most important aspect of these debates is based on whether piracy is theft or not. The debates have generated huge controversies mainly because theft is largely considered as morally incorrect or questionable. The arguments on whether piracy is theft are also fueled by the potential negative effects that piracy has on the sale of original products.

Arguments on whether Piracy is Theft:

As previously mentioned, there are several arguments that have been made in support or opposition of whether piracy is theft. On one hand, piracy is not regarded as theft according to various people who argue that it doesn't contribute to the loss of the original but the multiplication and spread of the product or item. For instance, when an individual copies a game, he/she increases the number of that game in the world while the owner does not lose the original copy. Therefore, this people do not consider piracy as theft because by copying copyright protected materials that belong to another person, the owner of the material is not deprived of his/her ownership of the material (Muller, 2012).

On the contrary, piracy is regarded as theft because of the potential negative effects it has on the sales of the original items. This is primarily because the pirate is stealing a sale and thus contributes to negative financial impacts on the owner of the pirated material. Secondly, pirate may give bad reviews of the material they pirated which is likely to contribute to the loss of sales. The best illustration of piracy being theft is that of identify piracy and pirating credit card numbers. When considered as mere copying the digital information, pirating a credit card number just like software is not necessarily wrong because the owner is still in possession of his credit card. However, the use of the pirated digital information of a credit card is theft when the pirate uses the number to make purchases of various items (Billy, 2011). This makes piracy to be theft because the pirate is stealing the owner's credit and using it for personal benefit.

Impact of Piracy:

In addition to the inconclusive debates and arguments on whether piracy is theft, this issue together with file sharing and copyright infringement in the current digital world is very complicated. The actual determination of the morality and legality of piracy is largely dependent on provision of meaningful information of what digital media is and what it should be. The difficulty in identifying whether piracy is theft is also attributed to lack of precise language to explain several kinds of content and information exchange on the Internet. Generally, the… READ MORE

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