FILE SHARING/ PRIVACY. SHOULD WE DO IT? IS IT FAIR?

File sharing and privacy has been a debate that I have agreed to disagree about constantly. By law file sharing is illegal the only exceptions are if you want to use someone else’s work to criticism, cite, remix, or comment.

In the context of music because the issue of file sharing music is very much an issue I am trying to battle because morally and ethically file sharing is not fair on an aspiring artist who wants to claim money on music that belongs to them, but some user decide to either download music or in the case of some films use uTorrent websites like pirate bay that cause some cash loss to the film makers.

On the other hand here are two scenarios:

A.     If the new Beyonce album came out on ITunes instead of purchasing the album I decide to just simply go on a website were I can download the songs for free

B.     If I have purchased and listened to the new Beyonce album and I know my friend likes beyonce but before purchasing she/he would like to listen to a sample of some of the songs. Thus I send the music to the friend to sample and she eventually purchases the album

Both of the scenarios are illegal as scenario A is showing an illegal act of downloading from a website for free without purchasing the album. Similarly scenario B is also showing an Illegal act as although it is some type of direct marketing which could evidently help gain revenue for the album it is still seen as file sharing which is again illegal.

In the cases of films people that use uTorrent websites they do create cash loss but that is probably like a small fraction compared to how much profit they make. For example, Game Of Thrones spent about 60 million on the first series and they made a vast amount more.

 However it is not ethically right to then try and earn money off websites that people use to download music/ films for free. Websites such as, Pirate Bay have earned millions for file sharing which is not right and for that reason that is why there is a law about sharing.

In hindsight not everyone earns money from it and quite a lot of people share files, even though the law is in place many people do not feel scared against the consequences of a virus or the law because out of the millions that do it that who really gets punished?