Topic 11-'The ethics of peer-to-peer filesharing'

Lecture:
In the lecture this week we discussed the ‘Ethics of peer-to-peer file sharing’. Each of the tutors expressed their own personal views of the media piracy situation that faces the world and internet uses on a daily basis. The lecture theatre was in a discussion about the topic, almost each individual having a different point of view, some agreeing, and some not. Overall the general consensus was that ‘everyone is doing it so why cant I?’ It was interesting to hear the different points of views that everyone has about the topic and the arguments that they raised ‘for’ and ‘against’.

Tutorial:
Following the lecture topic and discussion the tutorial was based on the discussion and each person’s personal opinions of peer-to-peer file sharing. The discussion was mostly based on the film and music industry with the issue of illegal downloading debated.
It was interesting to hear everyone’s different opinion about what they thought was fare for illegal file downloading and burning and their personal justification for doing so.

Readings:
The reading this week was an article called ‘When Pigs Fly; The Death of the Oink, the birth of Dissent, and the Brief History of Record Industry Suicide’. The article is about the music industry and the current debate of the illegal downloading of music of the internet. The article is two sided which is good to give the reader a chance to see the two sides of the argument and make up their own mind in the end. The positive side of the article is that the music is already out there and since it is a free download essentially there is no harm done. The other side of the argument is that by downloading this music for free off the internet that the people who have spent the time and effort making and producing this music are essentially ‘missing out’ on the money from their work. The author of the piece having a neutral argument, discusses that the music industry should have taken this into consideration a long time ago when the problem first evolved