2008 Woodie Awards
Pirating media and software is harmful
Point
Max Edmands
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Opinion
In the United States, duplication of copyrighted content is against the law.
According to the laws of our country, people who pirate media are committing a federal crime.
Yet, especially thanks to computers and the Internet, modern Americans are copying books, music, software, or movies without paying for them at an ever-increasing rate. At college campuses, media piracy seems to be exceptionally common; it has become an accepted and normal activity, perhaps even more common than underage drinking (but don't quote me on this).
If, hypothetically, I pirated something, I would rationalize that it's somehow an acceptable thing to do, despite the laws against it.
Probably the most common rationalization for piracy is that the cost of the media is too high. "A new copy of Photoshop CS3 costs $1000, but I only have $400 in my savings account. And I definitely don't want to blow all my money on a single piece of software," I might say.
But that doesn't justify me getting the software for free. If I want free software, I'd be better off not breaking the law and downloading open source, high-powered image programs such as GIMP or Inkscape.
Adobe created Photoshop; they deserve to set whatever price they want for it. If they set their price too high, then fewer people will buy their software. But the reason that Photoshop has always been so expensive is because it's good enough to justify paying that much for it. The high price of the software just makes stealing it into a more serious crime.
A typical new MP3 player has 160 GB of hard drive space on it. This is enough to hold 35,000 songs. (If each song was three minutes long, this would be enough music to fill 72 days, back to back.) If you were to buy each of these songs for a dollar, you'd rack up an impressive $35,000 bill. Unless you're as rich as Bill Gates, it's pretty likely that this much money is prohibitively expensive. Now imagine stealing that much money from a cash register at a record store. Is pirating 160 GB of music really worth it?
According to the laws of our country, people who pirate media are committing a federal crime.
Yet, especially thanks to computers and the Internet, modern Americans are copying books, music, software, or movies without paying for them at an ever-increasing rate. At college campuses, media piracy seems to be exceptionally common; it has become an accepted and normal activity, perhaps even more common than underage drinking (but don't quote me on this).
If, hypothetically, I pirated something, I would rationalize that it's somehow an acceptable thing to do, despite the laws against it.
Probably the most common rationalization for piracy is that the cost of the media is too high. "A new copy of Photoshop CS3 costs $1000, but I only have $400 in my savings account. And I definitely don't want to blow all my money on a single piece of software," I might say.
But that doesn't justify me getting the software for free. If I want free software, I'd be better off not breaking the law and downloading open source, high-powered image programs such as GIMP or Inkscape.
Adobe created Photoshop; they deserve to set whatever price they want for it. If they set their price too high, then fewer people will buy their software. But the reason that Photoshop has always been so expensive is because it's good enough to justify paying that much for it. The high price of the software just makes stealing it into a more serious crime.
A typical new MP3 player has 160 GB of hard drive space on it. This is enough to hold 35,000 songs. (If each song was three minutes long, this would be enough music to fill 72 days, back to back.) If you were to buy each of these songs for a dollar, you'd rack up an impressive $35,000 bill. Unless you're as rich as Bill Gates, it's pretty likely that this much money is prohibitively expensive. Now imagine stealing that much money from a cash register at a record store. Is pirating 160 GB of music really worth it?
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