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The Screwed
Up Internet \ The File Sharing Debate: Against File Sharing
Written in 2002, this was what dave used for his assignment. The assignment
was to write on a certain debate, and debate with other people in your group
who took the other side of the issue. Dave was put onto the "Against
File Sharing" side for the debate, however, the things said in this article
do not necessarily align with what dave believes. The points made in
this speech would be from someone's point of view (like the RIAA) that they
would use against file sharing.
File sharing services are nothing more than the carts that a shoplifter uses
at a grocery store that has no security and employees that don't care to
look at what you're doing. That's how millions of people steal from the music,
and other, industries, giving a negative effect to the sales of their products.
File sharing directly affects the economy, as record sales for the music
industry are at an extreme low. If these "shopping carts" are taken away
for good, it will be a serious deterrent to the illegal sharing of files.
As the file sharing programs become more and more popular, less will actually
want to spend money for what they can get, for a fraction of the cost, by
downloading the items they want and burning them onto blank CDs, with no
money at all given to the original producers. Its like the people that make
the items are working for no money, which is basically slavery.
File sharing programs state they are not responsible for what their users
download, even when they know that the law is virtually being broken with
every download, and they take no serious steps, that go past words, to stop
the illegal distribution.
In the past, file sharing programs connected users to users through a central
server, and once these companies were closed because of that fact, they became
sneakier, and made the "central server" its users, which is nearly impossible
to close down millions of people's computers, so then they won't be liable
to what illegal activities are happening indirectly because of them.
When file sharing programs use users as a server, they are mostly people
using a connection at their college, because they have a lot of bandwidth
to support the traffic of people downloading. These colleges are ending up
having to pay larger and larger amounts for their internet connections because
of this.
Having even one piece of something illegally downloaded, it is still, may
I remind you, illegal. You can be sued for petty theft or even grand theft
if you have enough illegal items on your computer. If you get convicted,
then you'll most likely end up having to pay a lot more than what you were
downloading is worth. When it comes to downloading illegally, it's a gamble.
File sharing does not only conflict with the law, but will impact society
itself. Children are growing up thinking that music should be free, when
it should not be free. Creativity will suffer, because fewer will be willing
to take the risk of pursuing a music career. Moral issues also come into
play, because you may not care that you're stealing, but you still admit
that what you are doing is wrong.
If file sharing is allowed to continue, many parties will miss out, such
as: Struggling artists that have not made it in the big time and are just
starting out, record industry workers which will most likely be fired because
they can't be supported by the record industry to keep them on the payroll,
and record stores, which will lose almost all its business, putting many
more out of work.
Works Cited
Dalnas, Eric, Matthew Roloff, and Keith Jenci. File Sharing: A debate With
a focus on trading MP3s. 4 December 2002.
<http://www.mredkj.com/other/sharing.html>.
University of Alabama. 4 December 2002.
<http://resnet.ua.edu/about/acceptuse.html>
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