The DMCA claims that it is illegal to provide in any way copyrighted materials. If such material is found the owner of the material is allowed to have the content holder remove the material. In which case the provider should remove the material and then notify the person who uploaded the illegal material. If the uploader feels that this is unfair they have a chance to dispute this and bring it to court. The DMCA also deals with infringement through “safe-harbor” provisions. Such provisions protect service providers from monetary damages for the infringing activities of their users and other third parties on the net. The DMCA hopes to limit piracy through these two provisions.
I personally do no think it is ethical for users to download or share copyrighted material. The owners worked hard to create the material and deserve to be recognized and benefit from their handwork and effort. There are other ways to sample or test the material. Specifically for music, iTunes offers 90 seconds of songs, that give you enough amount of time to decide if you like it enough to buy it. These change to 90 seconds happened in the last couple of years. iTunes responded to users claiming that their previous 60 second samples did not offer enough time to music listeners to get a jist of the song. Customers now have no reason to complain or pirate material. If a person truly likes the song or movie they are trying to get they will be happy enough to pay for the version of it. For example, Taylor Swift is my favorite artist and many people were very angry when she decided not to offer her music on Spotify. However, because she is my favorite I was not enraged. Instead, I was happy to buy her most recent album, 1989, to show that I support her and appreciate the music she produces.
That being said, I have participated in the sharing of copyrighted material. I do get the majority of my music from a youtube to mp3 download website. And when I do find the time to watch movies there are some times that I go to free websites and stream the movie. I didn’t really justify my actions. I just cared more about being cheap and not paying $1.29 for a song than breaking the law. This probably came about because I think that I will never get caught doing what I am doing. However, I do recognize that what I am doing is not fair to the artists and associates and I have tried to limit my piracy behavior. I think a lot of people engage in this behavior for the same reason. Teenagers many times have the mind set that just because people have been caught before they don’t think it will ever happen to them.
In the past few years though, I have heard of less people using pirate sites to get their music or movies. When I was in grade school, everyone used LimeWire, now the popular thing is to use Spotify, whether you have premium or not. The same goes for Netflix. I do think that these services have helped the piracy issue but I do not think they can ever completely solve the problem. That is mainly because I think that in general the problem can never be solved. People will always supply these sites and there will most likely always be a demand for them. I honestly think the government should try to limit the piracy use, but should not try to eliminate it. It is not worth their effort or money to try to eliminate. The few people that do pirate will continue to decrease with the rise of Spotify and Netflix and the such and the piracy group will become so little that it will become insignificant.
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