The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a controversial United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO. Its main purpose is to enforce the illegality of circumventing measures that control access to copyrighted works. It consists of two provisions for this goal of preventing piracy: the “anti-circumvention” provisions and the “safe harbor” provisions. “The ‘safe harbor’ provisions (section 512) protect service providers who meet certain conditions from monetary damages for the infringing activities of their users and other third parties on the net” (EFF – Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
Although the DMCA has sparked the development of a protest movement “made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of foiling ‘piracy’ will have disastrous consequences for society — hindering the ability to experiment and create and eroding our democratic freedoms,” — it is undeniable that its implementation ushered in the Web 2.0 explosion of interactive websites (The Tyranny of Copyright?). “Blogs, search engines, e-commerce sites, video and social-networking portals are thriving today thanks in large part to the notice-and-takedown regime ushered in by the much-maligned copyright overhaul” (10 Years Later). In other words, we have the DCMA to thank for most of the sites and applications we use today on the web.
I’ll admit that I have participated in the sharing of copyrighted material in the past and have streamed movies for free. Do I think this is ethical? No. Did I justify my actions? Yes. I think that, at least speaking for myself, it is much easier to justify this behavior in a virtual world than in the physical world. Physically stealing a movie from a store is a much more personal and real illegal action, whereas torrenting a movie online is much more removed and impersonal. We are overloaded with SO much free and instantly accessible information that it becomes much easier to justify obtaining something else for free. It also seems much less likely that we’re going to be caught because of the screen we’re hiding behind. As Stephen Witt wrote, “Ellis was later exonerated at trial, but the event made me wonder—was I a collaborative participant in a utopian underground economy, as I believed? Or was I a pawn in a massive conspiracy to defraud? Could I, too, be prosecuted?” (Goodbye to Piracy).
I do believe that the emergence of streaming service addresses the problem of piracy.”The best way to fight piracy isn’t with laws and lawsuits attempting to kill the immortal hydra, it’s by offering your product as cheaply as you can, as easily as you can” (Whatever Happened to the War on Piracy?). Television, movies, video games, music, eBooks, etc. that were exploited by means of piracy in the late ’90s are now available with applications developed by profiting companies. Now, piracy is inconvenient in comparison to utilizing companies such as Netflix or Spotify. As the writer in the article “Goodbye to Piracy” wrote: “But in 2014, I finally caved. Piracy was becoming too expensive and time-consuming—after a certain point, it was cheaper to subscribe to Spotify and Netflix.” Although it’s become much less common, piracy is a real problem because it still does exist on the Internet and does not give credit to the creators of copyrighted works. I think that ending piracy in its entirety is a lofty goal, so in that sense it is not a problem that is 100% solvable; however, the dramatic increase in the use of corporations like Spotify and Netflix illustrates that it is likely the most efficient and effective solution we have.
Ethics & Professional Issues 