Week 4: downloading other’s hard work for free?

The Internet is a very convenient tool for us people. It let us share information with each other. Once you post something online, people can see it. And there are a lot of things for us to use.

But after we saw that piece of information, people will want to own it. From downloading a picture, music, an MV, an episode of TV series, a movie, a book, to a software. They say that if you want it, you have to pay for it. But is that true? For example, people can easily find music online. you can listen to music on YouTube. you can also download them on iTunes or Spotify. As long as you paid, you are allowed to do so. But you can also find somewhere online that can let you download it for free. People usually prefer downloading for free. Who would want to pay when they could choose not to. but actually, that is against the law. There is a thing call intellectual property. you are paying for the effort the creator paid.

Interpretation — As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it’s no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. (Kelly, K. 2008)

And in this case, you are paying for the singer and the songwriter. People don’t work for nothing. if everyone can’t get their reward after working hard, who would still do that? And we may not ever have new music or movie anymore.

So next time when we want to download stuff online, we should think about the creators.

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Reference:

1. Kevin Kelly (2008, May), Better than Free, https://www.edge.org/conversation/better-than-free
2. Christian Barry (2015, April), Is downloading really stealing? The ethics of digital piracy, http://theconversation.com/is-downloading-really-stealing-the-ethics-of-digital-piracy-39930