Should people who download music or movies illegally be punished? This is a typical topic that everyone would like to contend with it. Someone might think there is a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ for downloading the music and the movies illegally should be punished. The purpose of choosing this topic is because nowadays the improvement of technologies is faster and changing it forms every year. In this progressive moment, we can easily download our favorite music or movies from the internet without any permission and rules to be accepted or followed. Many resources about the music or the movies that we select will be shown on our screen and we just need to be a ‘click’ on it so the things that we want will be downloaded. So back to the point, the purpose of choosing this topic is because I think that download music or movies illegally had to be punished. Today, there is an increasing number of people who download the music and movies for selling to the public for earning purposes.
Think about it, what if everyone downloaded the music and movies from the internet and without the pay off a single fees or money to the singer, actor and the administrator as known as the producer. With this sign, I think there is a zero number of singer and actor will keep going on with their creation because they feel that they get discouraged and disagreed from the public. It will become an issue of the singer or the actor didn’t get any contract or bankrupt due to zero payoff to their creation or production from the public and the supportive from the producer. In contrast, a singer or an actor will feel encouraged and more active with their creation on people who willing to spend their money on their product because of the product is worth to spend at the amount of cost. As they put a lot of essence into their work then they deserve to get the payment as an encouragement from the public.
As an introduction to this topic, I will talk about should people who download music or movies illegally be punished? It comes with a situation that people will argue about why we cannot download the music or movies from the internet just for self-using. Let me explain about what is illegal, the meaning of illegal is contrary to or forbidden by law. Therefore, download music or movies for free on the internet is an illegal action that equivalent as the word ‘stealing’ from the other ones. So, downloading a music or a movie from the internet without paying to the producer is an illegal action. Many people did not think about the side effect or the consequence of the action by downloading a music or a movie from the internet, actually it does some side effect to it.
Firstly, is that a person who illegal download a music and a movie should be punished? It is a yes for me because we notice that the music and the movie that we enjoy to is a product that an artist put a lot of effort, time and money into it. So what if our works are been using by the others without any permission or authorize from us? Of course, we will get mad and upset too because of our works have been taken by the others easily without any permission from us or payment to us.
Between, is that a person that illegal download the music and movies should be punished? Keeping in mind, the end of goal to keep the loss of unique works of art is to let those people who appear with illicit activities should be punished or take action so the public will not follow suit blindly as they realize the damaging impacts and harm due to their action before it become a common social trend that everybody just likely to download the music and the movies on the internet easily. I have given an overview about should people who download music and movies be punished and now we move on to the part of the content in the next paragraph.
Let’s begin with the first point, why should a person who download a music and the movies illegally have to be punished? Because of the law of copyright infringement, this is just like a criminal action as you download a music or the movies on the internet that is free of charge. Most of the people think that is an easy way to get a music or a video for free by simply downloading it from the internet but they didn’t realize that when coming to the law, it seems like a heavy or a serious punishment to them because it will cost a huge amount of penalties to them and they have to face the punishment as a highest penalties probably will come to 150,000 US Dollar (http://its.fsu.edu/its-policies-guidelines/illegal-downloading-copyrighted-songs-and-movies).
In addition, the amount of the penalty is high because of the government have the responsibility to protect the music industry and the movie industry from facing huge financial losses. If a company have seen their profits dropped, they have to shut down all the position that they can’t afford and this case will lead to the entire artist of the music industry and the movie industry facing the same problem that is the opportunity of jobs have decreased and most of the artist will get their job losses because of the illegally downloading music or movies from the internet. For that reason, the people who download a music or the movies illegally have to be punished as a guideline for the public to follow and respect the rules of copyright infringement.
Besides, let’s say a person who downloads the music or the movies from the internet illegally, it probably leads to some social problems such as huge losses of income to the country’s economy. Individual problem and the social problem will occur too, such as the argument that government didn’t take any action on the problem effectively and so on. The action should be taken by the government such as tighten up the law of copyright infringement and raise the number of penalty fees due to the severity of the case. To protect the country’s economy from submergence, the government have the responsibilities to enhance the law of copyright infringement and encourage the public to support or purchase the original version of an artist product to make sure that the country’s economy will not collapse by earning profit from the public to the music industry.
According to the report from Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), between the year of 2004 and the year of 2009, there were about 30 billion of songs were illegally downloaded from the internet. Even though today we offering with the sites like iTunes and Rhapsody for the legal downloads, peer-to-peer file sharing still appear. The oldest version of peer-to-peer file sharing from the network is Napster, through the evolving of technologies of the network, many of peer-to-peer file sharing had been created. By the way, the meaning of peer-to-peer file sharing is just like a downloaded item or files had been stored by a user on the internet and it allows all user to share the file together. The internet user can easily search their favorite things by finding the keywords in the file, the file is being categorized into a certain group as example music, video, drama, books and so on. The music sales in the United States have dropped about 47 percent since Napster present for the first time to the public in the year of 1999 and the availability of free download music has cost the music industry 12.5 billion US Dollar in economic losses (http://smallbusiness.chron.com/illegally-downloading-music-impact-music-industry-27748.html). Therefore, the people who download the music and movies illegally from the Internet should be punished or giving penalties as a lesson to them.
Furthermore, people who download a music and the movies illegally should be punished because of the moral attitude should be own by us from thinking about the consequences of what we have done before we start the action. As an example, illegally download a music or the movies is a shame or unethical moral value because it seems we like a thief by stealing other people’s material. We can damage our society moral value through the action of illegal downloading a music or the movies from the internet. It looks similar that online piracy had just taken away the earning rewards from the artist or the actor that they deserve to own it from their talent and hardworking.
However, the social notice about downloading a music or the movies are illegal but they still follow the trend blindly and didn’t think about the negative effect at the end that they will bring to the music or movie industry from their action. Of course a misleading will occur when the government didn’t take any action on the law of copyright infringement, illegal downloading a music or the movies will become a proper way and to be expected as a matter of course to the social and finally they consider illegal downloading a music or the movies is lawful and ethically (https://chrisluke1221blog.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/should-people-who-download-music-and-movies-illegally-be-punished/).
In addition, illegally downloading will actually harm or bring a negative impact to the celebrities. As their career is being a songwriter, a singer, an actor or a comedian, they hope that we as a guest or supporter will love to support them through buying their album or went to the cinemas for a movie. No one will actually love their career is like when we create something is unique and prepare to show to the public but at the end, they notice that when their new album is out, the number of illegally downloading is more than the number of purchasing their new album. For an example, I think the most common way to download the music or video is on YouTube, I am sure everyone knew about YouTube, it provides many tons of music and video because of everyone upload their files to YouTube for the earning purposes. But when the youtubers who uploaded a file that is copyrighted and pretends that it is the product that belongs to him or her for the earning purposes, it will become a problem that he’s or she’s personal YouTube account might be ban from the YouTube through the decision that made by the administration from YouTube. Not only that, for another example, an album can cost about thousands of dollars through the process along the production period in a music industry. So all of this album should not come by free, illegally downloading is just like a scenario that the artist profit has been taken illegally from the public (https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2016/02/01/how-online-piracy-hurts-emerging-artists/#43c16bf77774).
Let’s bring back to the title of the speech, should people who download music or movies illegally be punished? In my opinion, the person who downloads music and movies illegally from the Internet should be punished because of the negative impact brings to not only the personal of celebrities, but the country’s economy, social moral attitude, and so on. I am strongly disagreed with the action illegal downloading because it is an unfair situation to the artist that they pay hard work and lot of times into their talent creation. We also knew that when coming to the law of copyright infringement, the penalties were high as I just mention in the first point. Think twice before action and let’s become a good citizen and a role model for the younger generation before it’s not too late that everyone follows blindly suits the trend of ‘illegal download’.