Online Piracy, Legal or Illegal?

David Austin        English 5                Period 1        Ms Razak                11/25/15

                                Online Piracy, Legal or Illegal?

        Is online piracy legally or morally right? The answer is as simple as no. Online piracy hurts many people, even though you may not notice it. Piracy is the derived from the word pirate. A pirate is someone who steals items, whether precious or not, from others. This alone would make an average person know that online piracy is wrong in every way possible. When you download something from a bootleg website, you are robbing the owners of those items, music, games, films, etc. This is why it is considered piracy.

        According to source three (3), many files are pirated a day, especially songs. This goes to show how much money is being robbed a day by regular people like you and I. If a song was to cost $1.00, that would mean that over a $10,000,000.00 (10 million dollars) on average is stolen a day. Now tell me if this is not a serious crime. Also, you must think ahead about the future. According to source four (4), many artists have to struggle to pay for all the expenses involved in writing, preparing and distributing songs for us to hear. People, think about the future, if the artist stop making a profit off theirs songs, they will eventually stop making songs and then we would have no more new songs to listen to. Do you want this to happen, I know I don't.

        Source one (1) not only gives us many great reasons as to why online piracy is wrong, but it also gives us many great reasons as to why it is dangerous. Source 1 clearly states the following: When you participate in peer-to-peer networks, private data and sensitive documents on your computer become accessible to others. The practice of using file sharing sites also invites the threat of viruses. The risks involved in illegally reproducing or distributing copyrighted material are significant. It is against the law both to upload and download the copyrighted works of others without express permission to do so. It is stealing, and both civil and criminal penalties are severe.