One reason I disagree with file sharing is file sharing has a huge negative impacts on people who are music writers and movies makers. Let's Imagine if you are a music writer, and you know after you try so hard to write a song, instead of buying the CD, people choose to download it illegally from the internet. I bet you will immediately lose you motivation to try to make good songs if you see this will be the result. In my opinion, file sharing is definitely killing people's imagination, and therefore we are losing those talented people making a good movie and writing good song.
The other problem is viruses and malwares are spread widely through those illegal file sharing websites. There are various reasons why many people are not aware of security when they are downloading files. Some of them are lack of knowledge of computer security. Even some people who are experts on computer security because they can't wait to watch a new movie and listen to a new songs, they become careless and accidentally download those malicious files.
Although file sharing is bad and the government should do something with that, prohibiting illegal file sharing still has a long way to go.
Hi Tin,
ReplyDeleteI think BitTorrent is a software that helps you download things on torrents, not the website where you download things from right? If you think about file sharing as breaking and sharing copyrighted things, it is true that file sharing is a problem. However, if you think about file sharing as anything you can share on the Internet like posting something on Facebook or an attachment in your email, online file sharing has really changed the way people share things. Let me ask you this question. How did you share a 3gb file back in the old days? Did you have to burn a disc or copy it to a flash drive?
File sharing is a problem in some way, but it is also one of the best services that we have ever created :)
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ReplyDeleteHey Tin. You said that file sharing has a negative effect on music writers BUT I don't think that's true all the time. File sharing can actually help some (not all) artists gain recognition; they allow people to listen to the music before buying the CDs. Therefore, in some cases, file sharing can increases album sales. You are right that in most cases, file sharing does hurt sales.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that file sharing is highly risky. I have used BitTorrent in the past and my computer caught a virus which completely rendered it useless. After that I still use BitTorrent sometimes but I'm careful of what I download. It's not entirely bad because you can download/share things that are not copyrighted material.
Good post, interesting perspective. I do agree that there is a lot of illegal activity that is made possible via file sharing, but it is kinda harsh to have government totally put constraints on it. Perhaps you could have provided a better alternative for the government or websites to implement to help improve file sharing.
ReplyDeleteGood musicians make music for the love of making music, so perhaps it's a good thing that those who are in it solely for the money may lose interest. Richard makes a good point about gaining exposure through file sharing. Many independent artists will give away their albums for free just to gain and keep fans, relying on shows and merchandise as their primary band-related revenue streams. It's true that music sales take a hit, but the vast majority of this revenue for a signed band goes to the label anyway. To some extent it comes down to principle. With the cost of producing a quality album plummeting due to advances in recording technology the cost of music should become affordable as well or at least more if it should go to the musicians. This is not the case and as such has fueled the trend for DIY music where the band records their own albums independently. I think in the end it is the record labels that have been making us pay for overpriced CDs for years that will take the biggest hit if they can't adapt to the change in the market.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the ethics of the issue, however, file sharing is not going to go away. It has evolved over the years to become increasingly resilient and torrents especially are next to impossible to combat since they span thousands of different servers in different countries across the world that all have different laws regarding copyright and piracy. If The Pirate Bay can't even be taken down then there is no hope for stopping torrenting as a whole.