English Paper - Piracy and Stealing

Piracy has become an interesting ethical dispute over the past few years. Brian Lee, a customer who is dissatisfied with the quality of a computer game he had purchased at a major gaming company, is now seeking other alternatives for acquiring a computer game. Lee is optimistic about piracy and only sees weaknesses in the Digital Rights Management technology that controls access to digital material. He expresses his feelings through a message board and soon finds himself debating about this with a company representative. The company representative perceives piracy differently and sees piracy as another form of stealing. Therefore, examining the ethical aspects of piracy will only determine if it is morally acceptable.

Piracy and stealing have their similarities and differences. Their similarities are that they both result in getting something free of charge. The way piracy and stealing obtain music is different. For example, stealing from a record store would involve physically going to a record store, taking a CD off the shelf, and walking out of the store without paying for it.

This results in record stores losing money because of money they pay manufacturing companies to package, burn, and ship CDs into their store. With piracy, the pirate obtains the CD by accessing a file sharing website and downloading the CD for free that has already been purchased by someone else. From each free download, record stores are not losing money from manufacturing costs they incurred to bring the CD in their store. It could be argued that piracy amounts to lost sales because a pirate would be motivated to buy the CD if he couldn't download it. However, given that pirates look for cheaper alternatives to get the CD, it is unrealistic that every pirate would purchase a CD if it weren't available on the Internet. Although everyone's perspective of piracy is different, a majority would claim that it is unethical because its outcome is the same as stealing.

Today's generation of people is either in favour or against piracy. In the case, it is clear that Lee is in favour of piracy. Lee could argue that file sharing does not harm record stores. By downloading torrents on the Internet, record stores are not losing money from purchasing CD's from manufacturing companies. He could also argue that piracy is too large to regulate and monitor. Torrents have become so widely available and popular that authorities could not completely penalize everyone who downloads them. The company representative against piracy could argue that file sharing is illegal. Participating in piracy is a serious offense and can result in imprisonment or fines under the Canadian Criminal Law. The company representative could argue that increased piracy drives up price. Because the gaming companies are losing sales with more people downloading torrents than purchasing the game, customers who actually want to buy the game are now faced with an