Movie Piracy: Stealing and Irresponsibility - Essay Example

It has been a billion-dollar industry, whose direct revenues cannot be fully known, since not all pirated movies and activities are caught. Movie piracy is bad, because it is another form of stealing and showcases the lack of responsibility of people for their movie-sharing actions, and so it should be stopped by the government and film industry through a carrot-and-stick approach. Movie piracy is wrong, because people are stealing the productive works of others without paying anything for it.

By stealing, this refers to copying movies from peer-to-peer sharing websites and sharing them, or even selling them. Many countries with no or poor intellectual property laws or weak implementation of such laws have many pirated copies of movies sold discreetly or indiscreetly. The main effect of movie piracy is economic. People who steal movies online contribute to the losses of the movie industry: “The movie industry estimates that Internet swapping costs it more than $3.5 billion a year worldwide” (Terrell and Rosen 41).

If movie piracy continues, producers and writers might feel no incentive in producing movies, since they are not properly compensated for their efforts. The outcome will be lesser films produced every year. In addition, high levels of movie piracy can push production firms to lay off people. Granted that these people will be able to find jobs in other organizations, they are still removed from an industry that they may be happy with. Furthermore, movie piracy is wrong when people sell pirated movies.

It is similar to stealing a TV and selling it to someone else. What is worse with movie piracy is that even when one movie is stolen, it can be repeatedly copied and sold to many others. For piracy criminals, movie piracy is a very profitable business model. They do not pay the original makers for their products and yet they can re-sell them many times and expect continuous flow of profits. Movie piracy also erases the responsibility of people for what they did not even pay for. This is the unethical aspect of movie piracy.

Just because something is free, it is also easily shared with other people. More and more people get something for free, while others buy the same product. In the article “Piracy and Copyright: An Ethics Lesson,” Read talks about the efforts of James Gibson, an assistant professor of law at the University of Richmond, Charlottesville, who educates students about copyright laws in the digital age. Gibson stresses that people do not have ethical or legal rights to share movies and music. Someone exerted effort to create these products and market them, and unless these products are free, they put a price on it and expect people to get them, only after paying for them.

Sharing movies online, hence, is unethical, because it overrides the people who should be compensated for their works. People have become irresponsible for their actions, since they do not pay for these copyrighted products. The government and film industry should use a carrot-and-stick approach to provide legal and business solutions to movie piracy. For the stick approach, they should help create or implement laws that penalize organizations and individuals who sell pirated movies by copying them online.

This approach, however, has proven to be ineffective and has many freedom-of-speech detractors. The carrot approach will support the stick approach. This includes educating students and communities about the legal and ethical implications of piracy (Read). Through these efforts,