The Effect of Piracy on the Whole Society
Piracy is the act of illegal stealing and copying the content whether it is a software, music, movies or even games without taking permission from the owner of the content, and this is due to the rise of the computers and the rise in technology, the flourishing of digital piracy has flourished with the flourishing of technology. It is believed that digital piracy causes a lot of problems and can affect the society negatively in many ways, can cause a huge economic problem that can make the society collapse and can affect also the producers and consumers and ruin their lives, but also digital content can be quite expensive for some users that can’t afford it but it does not give them the right to do so.
The huge rising of the internet era made the whole new internet market exposed to many threats and risks, as digital piracy, cyberbullying and many other things, and the new age made sharing ways easier than in the past. And that is a reason for piracy because it is so easy to download whatever you want from websites that do not have enough privacy policies, but people tend to use digital piracy either when the product availability is specified to certain countries, and regions and also if the product is overpriced or unaffordable as the cost is a very important for the consumers. But the owner is free to price his content according to his effort, time and money in this work, so however is willing to buy this work must deserve and be worth it, and the owner of this work has the priority to give it to the type of people he thinks deserves to listen or read his content.
Digital piracy can affect the producers and consumers in a very bad way and can ruin their lives. Imagine the feelings of a song writer or a program creator when he invests his whole year writing and creating a song or even creating a new program with all the difficulties they face, money and time they invest in their work after the hard-work, someone steal their work and their achievements and attribute it to themselves or even making a copy of it and distributing it or charging people to see it, and also make it easy to reach instead of being payed-for to the real owner of this content, so the real owners lose money and they face many problems and their families also when they can’t afford to write a new album. It is believed that digital piracy is the same thing like shoplifting but on internet and it takes the same penalty in law. These contents should be allowed only for the people who purchased and payed for it instead of being for the whole world.
Piracy can cause a huge economic problem that can affect the society and making it collapse, as it is a serious problem that harms the society in an obvious remarkable way. For sure piracy affect the economy negatively by reducing the sales in either music, books, movies, games and software programs. Piracy can affect also every single one in the society and because of it most of the people loses their work due to the stolen profits, so they struggle supporting their families and their beloved ones. The decrease in revenue due to piracy is so recognizable that can destroy the economy and the return on the artists would be nothing. Countries where piracy is spreading and uncontrollable get blacklisted. In law piracy is a crime that should be held under both civil and criminal laws and the criminal should be taken to the court to be judged. Users of pirated content can face many problems such as a lot of viruses, corrupt disk, lack of technical support and harming their devices.
On the other hand, Digital content can be overpriced and quite expensive, especially when people target the high-end software packages, frequently this content can cost a considerable amount of money and not everyone can afford these prices. However, some users believe that movies, music, games and software should be available for free, this is the reason why people tend to download these content in an illegal way, as they run into financial hardships or even some people see that it’s just a conventional way to help cheapen and reduce costs. And it’s also considered as a victimless crime because it doesn’t hurt anyone so people take it with good intention. Pirated content is not always bad, sometimes it becomes beneficial, as some movies which is low budget or not promoted but the story was extremely beautiful and purposeful, but the availability of this content played an important role in raising the popularity over this content that was out of reach.
To sum up, Piracy have both effects the good one and also the bad one, but to be clear it is allowed only to the content creator of the work to copy, modify, distribute or even though use their work unless the owner give permission to the people he want. If it is not like that it can cause a huge economic damage and lead the person who break into someone’s else work to be judged by civil and criminal lawsuit because piracy has the potential to kill the whole industry. Although some people consider it as trespassing than theft, as it is not a big deal and it is just sharing or passing the content without thinking about the owner or the creator of that content and take it with good intention. Above all, countries where there is piracy in it have bad reputation, so piracy damages the whole country in all ways. So, the idea is to respect the owner and appreciate his work and try to save his work as much as we can.
Sources
- https://www.uscybersecurity.net/digital-piracy/
- https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/the-societal-costs-of-digital-piracy
- https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Digital-Piracy-F3JAWELYTC
