E-piracy

E-Piracy E-Piracy Introduction Electronic Piracy is globally emerged for the last few years. Academic books are illegally copied because of their high prices. Piracy is the illegal act that involves the consumption, manufacturing and distribution. E-piracy has become a problem where online producing industries find their products being stolen. Paying customers download these products and enrich pirates who steal the online products. Digital media has become portable. With the introduction of the Kindle in 2007, a new history started. Both musical and book industries have seen low physical sale for the last four years (Ried 2012). Emergence of hat most of students broadband and its easier access, e-piracy became the social issue with the download of the videos and music. Illegal use of the material with copyrights is not a new process on a whole. Sharing of peer to peer files became prominence in 1999. Napster with more than 20 million users was a popular company and used the file swapping technology. In 2002, concerns over the unauthorized digital files sharing over the internet, enforced the Federal Communication Commission for devising the laws to prevent the e-Piracy (Halfteck, 2006). E-books are accessed and purchased through online and consumers’ financial and personal information travels over the internet. Legal issue for the e-books is the copy protection of privacy. Can (2011) reports that e-books of top 10 best selling companies are downloaded 80, 000 times in a year throughout the world. In China, software piracy has exceeded than 80%, and IT professionals do not practice ethically in many organizations. Microsoft won the $320, 000 in a court over the illegal use of 450 copies for the 9 different programs against the Dazhong Insurance a Shanghai based company. Information Technology users also commit the piracy of software. A common violation takes place when companies’ employees take a copy of software for computers at home (Reynolds 2012). NetNames in an investigation found that more than 76% title books were available for downloading in a pirated form. In addition to this, it was also reported that most of the students downloaded the pirated copies of five major discipline text books. Educational books are too expensive that every student cannot afford to buy it from the concerned company (Izundu, 2013). In Germany, about 60% electronic books are downloaded illegally and market share remains below the 1%. People always look for the pirated e-book contents as they do not need to make corporate accounts. Arrival of Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s IPad in British market, illegal downloading of e-books has spiked among the women more than 35 years. Regardless of gender and ages, e-book reader used the illegal downloading of e-books without paying for these e-books. This finding has fueled the growing concerns of the publishers as they can suffer a commercial damage. Publishers face the big issues of illegal downloading of their books. E-book piracy is creating the similar financial crises as before it the music industry faced (Bradshaw 2011). It is impossible to calculate the precise impacts of e-piracy, the threat to entertainment firms. Fisk (2009) stated that Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued more than 18000 peer to peer users. Most of them were from colleges and high schools and their parents. Spreading the news of these lawsuits has made parents more awareness about the usage of home computers for illegal downloading and sharing the copyright works. Parents supervise the contents downloaded from their home computers. Academic literature on consumers’ behavior and attitude towards the illegal downloading of copyright material has concerned the ethical dimensions. Consumers’ ethical decision processes are affected by their acts of illegal copying or downloading of copyright materials. This business still lacks finding the legal or academic solution. Breadth of technological possibility of files shifting and files downloading has found it difficult to include all these types of activities either ethical or technological perspectives. However, all types of the illegal downloading activities are mostly taken in the ethical dimensions. In the online world, rules are not clearly established and resulting into weak enforcement of methods. Unauthorized downloaders of copyright material are grouped into three main categories, those who do not know fully about IP, know fully about IP and choose IP but neglecting its implications. Legislation, enforcement and education have addressed these three positions of illegal downloader of copyright material (University College London 2009). Conclusion: In this paper, e-Piracy has been focused in perspectives of whether ethical issue or a technological issue. Different e-Piracy examples are also made part of this paper to show that who are more involved in this illegal downloading of material from different companies. References Bradshaw, T. (2011). Women help fuel rise in e-book piracy, Available from http://www. ft. com/intl/cms/s/0/38c0f674-7ff3-11e0-b018-00144feabdc0. html#axzz2mOKo0M1a Accessed on 02/12/2013. Cane, A. (2011, October 18). Spread of ebooks may heighten piracy problem. Available from http://www. ft. com/intl/cms/s/0/607a1922-f00d-11e0-bc9d-00144feab49a. html#axzz2mEzUcJGf Accessed on 01/12/2013. Fisk, N. (2009). Understanding online Piracy: the truth about illegal file sharing, Praeger. Halfteck, G. (2007). Legislative Threats, Available from http://law. bepress. com/cgi/viewcontent. cgi? article= 5300 Accessed on 30/11/2013. Izundu, C. C. (2013). Students ‘worst’ at e-book piracy, says data monitor, Available from http://www. bbc. co. uk/newsbeat/24540745 Accessed on 02/12/2013. Reynolds, G. (2012). Ethics in information technology, (4th Ed.). CENGAGE Learning. Ried, R. (2012). What to do when attacked by Pirates, Available from http://online. wsj. com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303552104577438212250619458 Accessed on 01/12. 2013. University College London (2009). Copycats? Digital consumers in the Online Age, CIBER.