Property v. Piracy
The Debate over Intellectual Property in the Information Era
Issues over private and intellectual property abound in our current era—the information age. I see this every day with myself and with my friends as we constantly download music, movies, images, software, and anything else from the internet. Some of this is done legally, and some of it isn’t. Some of the illegal activity is done with full knowledge of its illicit nature and with deliberate intention, but then again some is done simply by mistake, or because we don’t know better.
The pressures of society in the information age are constantly pushing us to be able to perform the activities we perform when we are online, but we must always be aware (and thus responsible) for our activities, and that we ensure we are using the potential property of others respectfully. There are many international agreements concerning copyright protection.
Despite these agreements, there are large groups of people who are opposed to the very idea of respecting intellectual property. These pirates are as adamantly opposed to the idea of a person owning a piece of media (for profit) as the owners would be in asserting their rights over the piece of property. While these pirates who are philosophically opposed to the idea of intellectual property, many citizens, especially college students, are active pirates, but would not be if there were viable options to avoid it.
The lack of viable alternatives to piracy has obviously been the main cause for its rampant success in recent years, and especially with the expanding popularity of the internet. While law may always be attempting to catch up to technological innovation, there are easy ways for companies to preserve their intellectual property while allowing its patrons the freedom and ease of use piracy offers.