Claim of Policy
Piracy versus Record Industries
In the age of technology and information, the Internet has become widely used for a variety of reasons. Many people, especially teenagers and college students, love to download things off the Internet. Everything is right there in front of them. With a few clicks of the mouse and some intelligent searching strategies, a world of information awaits their curious minds. There is much to be found: movies, computer games, books, reference guides, almost anything you want are there to download. Everyone's favorite is downloading music, it is easily accessible on the Internet and everybody loves music. At first, the "hot" thing was to use Napster, a peer to peer sharing program, meaning one person is downloading something from another person's computer. This became a problem for RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America), and decided to begin suing anyone caught sharing or downloading copyrighted files. This policy is irrational and should be modified to fit reasons for downloading or sharing.
If a person hears a good song on the radio, that person would remember the song and artist, and try to download it. After a while, record companies realized that this was causing them to lose business, and so there was a big court mess about the legality of downloading music. The popular peer-to-peer servers are Gnutella, Morpheus, and Kazaa. The legality of these sites and all sites like it is hotly debated. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced on June 25, 2003, that it will begin suing users of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems. The problem with this policy is that it includes everyone connected to the computer that was used for downloading. This policy does not investigate who is really at fault, but rather, RIAA slaps a subpoena to the person they think is at fault. The RIAA does not care enough about who they sue to investigate, and if they are mistaken, they will just sue again.
This policy is
In the age of technology and information, the Internet has become widely used for a variety of reasons. Many people, especially teenagers and college students, love to download things off the Internet. Everything is right there in front of them. With a few clicks of the mouse and some intelligent searching strategies, a world of information awaits their curious minds. There is much to be found: movies, computer games, books, reference guides, almost anything you want are there to download. Everyone's favorite is downloading music, it is easily accessible on the Internet and everybody loves music. At first, the "hot" thing was to use Napster, a peer to peer sharing program, meaning one person is downloading something from another person's computer. This became a problem for RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America), and decided to begin suing anyone caught sharing or downloading copyrighted files. This policy is irrational and should be modified to fit reasons for downloading or sharing.
If a person hears a good song on the radio, that person would remember the song and artist, and try to download it. After a while, record companies realized that this was causing them to lose business, and so there was a big court mess about the legality of downloading music. The popular peer-to-peer servers are Gnutella, Morpheus, and Kazaa. The legality of these sites and all sites like it is hotly debated. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced on June 25, 2003, that it will begin suing users of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems. The problem with this policy is that it includes everyone connected to the computer that was used for downloading. This policy does not investigate who is really at fault, but rather, RIAA slaps a subpoena to the person they think is at fault. The RIAA does not care enough about who they sue to investigate, and if they are mistaken, they will just sue again.
This policy is