A Report On Copyright Infringement: Movie Piracy

The twenty-first century has been filled with rapid, continued innovation and advances in the domains of technology, information, and knowledge transfer. Current technological developments are so extraordinary especially those related to telecommunications and information. Existing technology was created with the aim of helping and providing convenience in various aspects of human life, both when humans work, entertain, engage in activities, and even communicate. In this increasingly modern era, people will always rely on the increasingly sophisticated technology, where the newly improved technology is very useful and yet it helps with our everyday life. With the easy access of technology, we are able to do various types of activities easily without having to spend lots of effort. This activity varies from information technology, telecommunications, transportation and others. The benefit of technological and information development is that it can improve and facilitate communication, as well as being the bridge for overseas interaction. The presence of new information and communication technologies has led to a worldwide communication revolution. In the past, it took a very long time to be received or sent to someone else. In addition to providing convenience in communicating, the presence of the internet also provides convenience in accessing information.

Now we can easily access and receive types of information or types of news easily whenever and wherever. Ease of accessing information gives to the knowledge we have. Working boldly or working remotely is another benefit of the development of communication and information technology. Related to the development of communication and information technology, trade can now be conducted electronically or via e-commerce. E-commerce plays a very important role in the economic world because it contains a trading process that allows consumers to search for and buy products boldly without going to the store. Not to mention, there are still thousands of other benefits given by the rapid change of the newly improved and developed technology. We are now in a new era, one in which globalisation and rapid evolution of digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are bringing significant changes to society. The environment and people’s values are becoming increasingly diverse and complex. The rapid evolution of information and communications technology (ICT) brought drastic changes to society and industry. Digital transformation creates new values and had became a pillar of industrial policy in many different countries around the world. At the same time, the world is increasingly faced which challenges of global scale relating to the use of technology in the modern world. These issues are listed as follow, online harassment, unwanted surveillance, copyright infringement, song piracy, movie piracy, cyber scam, cyber terrorism, cyber extortion, cyber warfare, online harassment, online racism, cyber bullying, online predator, cyber stalking, and internet troll. When using technology, we are required to maintain certain ethical behaviour in order to stay out of trouble. Violation of the behaviours can result in various problems including crime action. The first ethical behaviour required is, an individual should not use a computer to harm other people. By means, it is unethical to harm or endanger other people by giving threat, creating bombs, or hijack their files. It is also unethical to interfere other people's computer work. Not to mention, snooping around in other people's files and reading other people’s e-mail messages is a part of a non ethical behaviour as it is invading their privacy. Using a computer in order to break the bank is also a violation against the law that can result in jail consequences. Modern technological world can result benefit us in so many ways including giving various information and news, but at the same time it can give false information or even false propaganda of the history, and yet this is an unethical behaviour because it bears with false witness. Software is an intellectual product and an individual shall pay for the software in order to avoid obtaining illegal copies of copyrighted software, movies, or even applications. Lastly, hacking a system to break and bypass the authorisation is unethical. For this particular article, we will be focusing on one of the most major issue regarding the use of Information and Communication Technology, which is copyright infringement and we will be discussing specifically on the topic of movie piracy.

Movie and film is a work of art in the form of a series of live images that are rotated to produce an illusion of moving images that are presented as a form of entertainment. The illusion of a series of images produces a continuous motion in the form of video. Film is a form of modern and popular art created for the sake of business and entertainment. On the other hand, movie piracy is the act of acquiring, selling, distributing, or uploading copyrighted movies or film on to the internet or burn it into Digital Versatile Disk (DVD). Piracy refers to the unauthorised duplication of certain copyrighted document or content that is going to be sold at a lower price on the grey market with various different target markets all around the world. The easy access to technology had turn piracy into something very normal and rampant. For example, movie makers are available off the self at very low prices, making movie piracy a simple affair. Piracy can be done in many ways, such as, cable piracy, video piracy, and Digital Versatile Disk/Compact Disk piracy. Video piracy takes place when a certain particular movie or film is produced in videocassette form without proper copyright or authorisation from the producer, movie maker, or the right holder. Only few movies were exist and uploaded on torrents or other form of piracy websites before they screen in movie theatres. When a movie is released world wide, the first wave or people who do piracy came to capture the screenplay by videotaping the screen and work of movie inside the theatre during the film schedule. They do this religiously in order to gain money as they will screen record and burn their own Digital Versatile Disks and sell it on their community. This action is very much unacceptable in the United States of America, and there are Federal Laws that exist and will be use to punish this action of recording. Piracy normally came from Mexico or other countries that is culturally accepting this action. These Digital Versatile Disks were uploaded on the internet almost before the theatrical run has finished. Either way, the piracy communities where pirate Digital Versatile Disks market works do not have enough source of internet access and this has little influence on to the local markets.

After the first wave of piracy is released, there will be second or even more piracy wave coming through. This wave normally targets the quality of the copy, trying to get the highest resolution uploaded on to the piracy website as soon as possible. Most people support the piracy action because they don’t want to pay for certain movies. Production houses charges people to watch their movies on theatre and people usually don’t want to pay for it. Another major reason behind piracy is that the movie or television show is not available on their region by mean, it is not publicly released in that country. Sometimes, the other reason of piracy is the movie itself had been going through a delay during the process of releasing in which some people are sometimes impatient to wait so they ended up watching it on torrent websites. Maybe people think that piracy culture is very common as they don’t see the impact it gave to other people. Or simply because they thought it’s just watching a movie but it is free. Though it can be detrimental to film actors such as producers, film players and even the people of Indonesia who is now starting to gain recognition in the film industry. With so many fake CDs or DVDs that are cheaper, people are starting to leave the original CD and DVD stores and this is one of the main cause why CDs and DVDs store went bankrupt. In addition, with piracy, cinema visitors will be reduced, they prefer to watch movies at home with fake CDs or DVDs or through sites on the Internet that provide pirated films or movies.

The results of Badan Economy Kreatif (BEKRAF) research with (LPEM) related to the impact of film piracy resulted in the loss of revenue in the film industry around Rp 31 billion to 636 billion rupiah per year. There is one case of movie piracy that shook the whole internet world back in 2016, with the case of William Kyle Morarity who was sentenced for crime felony of copyright infringement after he admitted that he pirated and uploaded the movie ‘The Revenant’ and ‘The Peanut Movie’ from the 20th Century Fox and sharing them illegally on a piracy website to pay the studio $1. 12 million in restitution. William Kyle Morarity, aged 31 years old, from Lancaster, California was working for a studio last year and yet he uploaded a movie on to a piracy website resulting the United States District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson to sentence him on an eight months’ home detention and 24 months probation. Willian Kyle had been facing maximum sentence for three years in federal prison. Under the name of “Clutchit”, William Kyle Morarity uploaded the movie ‘The Revenant’ on to a torrent website called Pass The Popcorn six days before the original movie debuted on theatre. According to authorities, more than 1 million users around the world downloaded the movie over a six weeks period, resulting in the loss of $1 million for Fox Movies Company. Based of the officials and authorities, Morarity copied Fox Movies screeners onto a portable device and then he uploaded the movie from his computer on his home on the 17th and 19th of December, 2015. In order to minimise piracy from happening and continuing, there are few things we can do to prevent and minimise them. The first step is to build awareness of movie piracy. Building awareness of movie piracy can be in a form of poster, digital campaign, brochure, pamphlet, or other form of media that will attract other people to read it. By building awareness, we are actually helping in making people realise how bad it is to pirate a movie and upload it to a torrent or pirate website. Not only that, we can educate people by giving them information about the dangerous of movie piracy and why it is considered as an illegal action that violates the law on certain countries.

The last thing to do when it comes to trying to stop piracy is to block a piracy website. A country has to have a server of its own that can detect piracy websites or torrent that supports this action in order to stop it and minimise the case of movie piracy inside the country. By having zero to none piracy website, people have no choice than to purchase the movie or go to the cinema to watch a certain movie that is playing currently. Technology has evolved rapidly in the past centuries. From computer, artificial intelligence, internet of things, or even something as simple as our smart phone has established a new improvement every year. This modern technology has created bridge and easy access for extensive number of human. By means, technology made our life so easy, simple, and accessible. Even though the world of technology had improved, the modern world is faced with cyber issues, like movie piracy that is relating to copyright infringement. This issue happened for quite some time and it is a violation of the law resulting in prison consequences. Movie piracy will also impact the economics and work force on the movie production. As a result, the revenue of the movie industry drastically decreased resulting to bankrupt. Movie piracy is a harmful crime and must be eradicated as soon as possible. In order to prevent and reduce the chance of movie piracy, we can raise awareness of movie piracy, educate people about it, spread posters or brochures, and start with ourself by going to the theatre to watch movie or pay for a movie membership on legal movie websites.

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