Reference no: EM13372752

Significance: (why this is important and the impact to our society):

- Reasons of (illegal copying), (the roles piracy plays on society)

- Consequences of illegal copying, eg affect on economy

- Importance of computer ethics and counter examples.

- Solutions to the illegal copying

First of all, we have to understand why piracy is existing in society and how piracy impact to our society so that computer ethics have to be important to promote.

There are several reasons that priacy is existing in society.

First of all, people precieve that the price of products are unacceptable or unaffordable.

Some people acknowlege that price of products such as movies, computer softwares, and musics is a big deal and some of products are unreasonably high. Rather than actually spending money on buying the product, they decide to indirectly steal the product in digital format. They will search the digital contents and download them online for free. In that way, people are no longer required to pay any money and acheive their goal of enjoying the contents of products.

Richards in his article provides an common perspective from people who are illegal downloading digital contents. He states that movie DVDs, music CDs, software are actually quite expensive. Digital recordings, cost of production, packaging and delivery from producers are minimized. Another article, Onselen descibes priracy in Australia is widespread. Purchasing contents legally is usually more inconvenient than illegally download the contents online for Australians. He emphasizes the cost of copyrigted content is remakably pricy as a recent parliamentary report, At what cost? found out eBooks, music ,and video games are 16%, 52% and 82% more pricy in Australia. Thus, the unacceptable or unaffordable price of products or contents are explainning why piracy is existin in society.

Beside this, people are having a sense that digital priating is the mainsteam in society. Many people who illegally downloading digital contents such as music, movies, and games, believes that musicans or movie producers are generally acceptable the ideas of priating. Daily Mail Reporter states a Latin superstar Shakia supports those who are using Internet file sharing. She said "It's a democratisation of music in a way. And music is a gift. That's what it should be, a gift." By sharing the music, she feels closer to her fans and people who love music. Moreover, there is no problems in downloading digital contents illegally since everyone else is doing the same action. Lee in his news report states that the inaugural Digital Music Index, produced by monitoring service Musicmetric, shows Edward sheeran, a famous English singer songwriter, is the most illegally downloaded artist in 459 of the 694 cities, towns and villages. It found out that people obtain their music files from BitTorrent. Due to the majority of priating and the acceptable ideas from producers, people excuse the practice of pirating with reasons.

Furthermore, the distribution methods to customers are not well-performed. Some TV shows and cartoon animations are pirated popularly. People feel the way that TV shows or cartoon animations is very inconvenient for them to watch.  First, only cable customers or subscription members are accessible to these shows or animations. When people are willing to spend their money on specific channels, cable companies will provide the channels that contains these TV shows; otherwise, people have to wait for a while til the show is released in other media such as DVD or Blue Ray. Hart in his article reminds that HBO, an American premium cable and satellite television network company, are hard to access if one have no cable and a subscription, one will have to delay watching on iTunes, Amazon Prime or on DVD. Ani in her article revealed that the most illegally downloaded TV shows for the second year is Game of Thrones with 5.9 million via BitTorrent.

Second, these shows or animations are only shown on specific location. People feel that they have no alternatives to watch the TV shows because they are offered the shows locally, not globally. People who work or live in different country are not allowed to watch other country TV shows due to the different geographic location. Downloading TV shows illegally online give them freedom of choice to watch their favorite shows anytime and anywhere. Amy in her blog mentioned that Downton Abbey, a TV shows airs on the British network, iTV1, is available to watch online in United Kingdom, but she could not view this show in America. As a result, the distribution methods with limited location encourage people to download shows or animations illegally.

Impact to society of illegal copying, eg affect on economy

1) Effect on Entertainment Industry

While people enjoying taking advantages of piracy, there is no doubt about that piracy play significant impact to our economy.

Although Ethics deal with moral issues of right or wrong and what behaviors are well-performed to a society, there is no doubt about that piracy plays the importance roles on society.