Since I've been doing blog responses for one of my other classes, someone recently pointed out to me that I should post those responses on here. What a great idea!
So, this is the beginning of a series of posts called "My Thoughts On..."!
This week. Piracy.
Personally, I believe that that should be the case, although that tends to be difficult in our ever-advancing technological world. For me to fully understand the effects of piracy, I tend to put myself into the shoes of those that actually make or produce the music and/or films that are being pirated. Say you were a struggling musician. Piracy basically affects your way to earn a living, taking away part of your income. You can also look at it from the other way; that big artists or film makers already have enough money and that downloading a song or a movie won’t make a difference in the long run. It can be a double-edged sword. Looking at it from another point of view, Hollywood employs 2.5 million Americans in 50 states. These are middle class people that need their job and piracy could cause them to lose their jobs. But in regards to copyright, I believe that it is being protected pretty well already in this advanced technological age considering the amount of piracy on the internet. A prime example being YouTube; they use extensive copyright procedures and are always scouring the site to find copyright infringements and delete these videos. Being on the topic of internet videos, here is one of my favourite internet flash animations, directly related to piracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBoOLR7WoN8 (Don’t worry, I’m not going to Rick Roll you.) I’m not going to lie, as I have participated in piracy before. But the key question is, who hasn’t?
Does piracy create a more democratic society where anyone has access to new music and video products? I would not look at the society that piracy creates as “democratic”. It is more of a “free-for-all”, if you will, with anyone having access to new music and movies at any time, all the time. As a result, it has created a dominant and prevailing force that has taken the internet by storm. This could even be related to the news that Blockbuster in the United States has filed for bankruptcy. Online piracy of movies and television shows could be a direct result of this. People find it easier to look online for movies rather than spend money at their local video store and could cause video chains that depend on the distribution of movies to close, causing more job losses. In my eyes, that does not seem very democratic at all.
Does piracy create a more democratic society where anyone has access to new music and video products? I would not look at the society that piracy creates as “democratic”. It is more of a “free-for-all”, if you will, with anyone having access to new music and movies at any time, all the time. As a result, it has created a dominant and prevailing force that has taken the internet by storm. This could even be related to the news that Blockbuster in the United States has filed for bankruptcy. Online piracy of movies and television shows could be a direct result of this. People find it easier to look online for movies rather than spend money at their local video store and could cause video chains that depend on the distribution of movies to close, causing more job losses. In my eyes, that does not seem very democratic at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment