Against Video Piracy
Video piracy is a form of theft. Specifically, it refers to the unauthorized copying or use of intellectual property. Intellectual property is knowledge or expression that is owned by someone. One type of intellectual property is movies, which is protected by copyright law. Many of the issues dealing with piracy have to do with the difference between intellectual property and physical property. A DVD, for example, is a piece of physical property, but the video on the DVD are intellectual property. A customer in a record store can purchase a CD, but someone still owns the video on the DVD. More and more people need to protest against Video Piracy, Wikipedia and other web giants staged a one-day blackout and Google organized a petition drive that attracted more than 7 million participants (“Abrams”). The head of I.C.E., John Martin, says that the number of illegal movie sites is dramatically rising both in the U.S. and abroad (“Abrams”).I.C.E., which is part of the department of Homeland Security, seized nine domain names (“Boortin”). White House Spokesman, Jay Carrey, said online piracy is an issue that has to be addressed,” but everybody has to be in on it for it to work and get through” (“Abrams”). Video Piracy should be banned. The White House said it would “not support any legislation that reduces freedom of expression (“Abrams”). So please, stand up for what is right, start protests and help setup petitions. People don’t look at what Video Piracy does to the economy when someone downloads a movie from the “net”. The Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A.) and Protect I.P. Act (P.I.P.A) bills in congress argue that online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 And $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs (“How much do music…”). All of this money and job loss could all be stopped If congress passes the law to ban Video/Online Piracy. It has nothing but negative affects on the U.S. economy.