Recently, the famous
data sharing website megaupload got shut down by the federal government. The
owner Kim Dotcom and other company executives were arrested as well. This is really bad news for a lot of people
including myself. I used to download new movies that just hit the theatre from
the site for free of charge, and the speed was quite impressive. Although the
movie’s quality was extremely bad, but it doesn’t really bother me because I
was more curious about the movie’s content. On the other hand, I totally understand there
is serious violation of other’s copyrights involved in such actions, but I
always persuade myself that I was only one of the millions who are doing the
same thing right now to reduce my feeling of guiltiness. It turns out due to
the shut down incident, many other anonymous hackers attacked the government’s
website. The website’s intended legal
use was to share large files that couldn’t be sent via email such as wedding
videos etc. across the globe. There was even a song called ”Maga Song”
performed by will.i.am., P. Diddy, Kanye West, Chris Brown, and Kim Kardashian.
This even surprised me that a supposedly illegal website was gaining so much
support from well-known celebrities before it got shut down.
The topic of copyrights and privacy on the Internet
has been talked about for a long time. In my opinion, I think violation of
copyrights is almost impossible to be eliminated. Even if users and organizations are imposed,
the process of the movie company to sue to each individual website for
illegally distributing its content would take time and effort. The cost hiring
lawyers, suing them would also cost a fortune. Furthermore, for Internet
content provider to sign legal documents with each of the original creator of
the content would be complicated, not economically viable if the website has a
lot of information. And it even slows
down the speed of broadcasting of the content which is suppose to be the number
one advantage of internet – speed. Therefore, to protect the rights of the
creators and to preserve the effectiveness of internet, I think both the
creator and the end user need to sacrifice a little bit and find their balance
point.
In response to: "On the other hand, I totally understand there is serious violation of other’s copyrights involved in such actions, but I always persuade myself that I was only one of the millions who are doing the same thing right now to reduce my feeling of guiltiness"
I download many movies too, but I feel that the problem is simply that if I were to buy all the movies I watched, it would just be way too expensive for me.. And I know that's not just a problem for me, but for many people who pirate movies. Quite a few years back, when BlockBuster was alive and well, I used to rent movies all the time because it was cheap, and convenient (only because it was really close to my house). But today, with huge improvements in internet bandwidth over the "BlockBuster days", I feel that companies should make it much easier for us to rent movies and simply stream them online to view for a couple days or so, just as BlockBuster used to work. I realize there are services such as Netflix that do just that, but have you noticed the selection for Netflix in the US vs in Canada? In my opinion, our collection doesn't even merit me paying whatever the monthly fee is for the service, because I wouldn't be interesting in many of the movies there, and the newer ones take too long to be released onto the service, versus how long it takes in the US.
I agree with your opinion. If I have to pay for every movie, and song that I have watched, it may double the size my current student loan. I used to rent movie form BlockBuster all the time too, too bad it is gone forever, they have really good deals. I believe that if the online movie webs have good safety and selections, more reasonable prices, and more up-to-date release, then many people would give up illegal downloads.
In response to:
ReplyDelete"On the other hand, I totally understand there is serious violation of other’s copyrights involved in such actions, but I always persuade myself that I was only one of the millions who are doing the same thing right now to reduce my feeling of guiltiness"
I download many movies too, but I feel that the problem is simply that if I were to buy all the movies I watched, it would just be way too expensive for me.. And I know that's not just a problem for me, but for many people who pirate movies. Quite a few years back, when BlockBuster was alive and well, I used to rent movies all the time because it was cheap, and convenient (only because it was really close to my house). But today, with huge improvements in internet bandwidth over the "BlockBuster days", I feel that companies should make it much easier for us to rent movies and simply stream them online to view for a couple days or so, just as BlockBuster used to work. I realize there are services such as Netflix that do just that, but have you noticed the selection for Netflix in the US vs in Canada? In my opinion, our collection doesn't even merit me paying whatever the monthly fee is for the service, because I wouldn't be interesting in many of the movies there, and the newer ones take too long to be released onto the service, versus how long it takes in the US.
I agree with your opinion. If I have to pay for every movie, and song that I have watched, it may double the size my current student loan. I used to rent movie form BlockBuster all the time too, too bad it is gone forever, they have really good deals. I believe that if the online movie webs have good safety and selections, more reasonable prices, and more up-to-date release, then many people would give up illegal downloads.
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