Piracy as defined by a class

In a classroom where Professor Vantaggiatto decided to make us post about piracy in our blogs for class as an assignment:

Let’s say this: our professor just asked us which of us actually buy music like for example in itunes.

In  class of  17 students, only two raised their hands.

Now how many students have Hulu or Netfix?

2.

How many of us have Cable TV

14.

How many of us still rent at Block Buster, or the corner video rental store?

8.

How many of us download movies and/or music to our computers?

13.

How many of us stream movies off the internet?

13.

According to our teacher, streaming is mostly illegal. It’s not the same thing streaming by subscription than streaming for free on websites. It is useful though because it makes life easier when it comes to movies.

And now he asks us: How many of us are willing to stream or download information and other types of material in a legal way? How many of us are willing to pay for it.

 

Our class has two rows  of  four tables one behind the other and three computers on each table. On the first row I numbered the computers from right to left and on the second row I numbered them from left to right, like this:

computers: 3, 2, 1        |===|    |===|    1, 2, 3 :computers

computers: 6, 5, 4       |===|    |===|     4, 5, 6 :computers

computers: 9, 8, 7       |===|    |===|     7, 8, 9 :computers

computers: 12, 11, 10|===|    |===| 10, 11, 12 :computers

row:1     row:2

The next round of questions and discussions during the debate in class  were all answered by people sitting in these computers. Whenever an answer was Documented, the person will be referred as C (computer)__, R (row)__ referring to the computer that person was sitting in front of and the row that computer was in.

 

And now a decisive question: What if you could see movies or listen to music through your cable provider?

Many computer users were not really up for it.

And now how many of us have heard of Spotify?

C-4R-2 has but wasn’t really completely sure of the idea, she did associate it with Pandora.

Spotify is a type of application  that allows you to listen to music that people share. If you buy the pro version you can see it on mobile devices.

How many of us are willing to pay for this?

C-4R-2 said she would not. In the end Not many college students don’t have the money to pay monthly for a service.

Still our professor told her that we don’t have money for many things for example our cell phones but we still make the money.

Then C-6R-1 said that we’re so used to free services we don’t care if it’s illegal. If these services were not available we would find the money for these.

The professor agreed with this point and so did the majority of the classroom.

To keep economy afloat these companies have to look for a way to get with the times and to cope with the customer and sell their item; they need to put it out there somehow.

Bruce Willis is suing itunes cause he has thousands of tracks and material from itunes that he cannot share with his daughter. This example was given by the professor to prove his next point.

In the end sharing this for free, like for example giving someone your password for your account, is a sort of piracy cause they’re mooching off without paying.

Now the real question: as C-6R-1 one says we are not willing to pay for these services when we can have them for free; the professor asks is it really stealing?

When you have something or a service without paying then it is illegal because you’re basically stealing it. It’s a non-authorized non-lucrative copy of what someone is selling. It wasn’t a free gift, you just sneaked it out.

C-1R-2 said that there are some rules that are just stupid.

C-6R-1 says it is not right to steal this material, it is how they make a living and we’re robbing it from them.

Nowadays when a movie come out to the theaters, five days later it’s out on the flea markets and streets.

C-11R-1 said five days only?!

What does this do, people don’t go to the movies. The people who put their money into making a movie are not gaining a revenue. In the mall you can see these movies on sale and many other material like computer programs.

How many of us think downloading music illegally is still stealing?

Does that make us criminals?

C-1R-2 said we are.

C-11R1 said the real criminal is the uploader. C-12R-1 said that if someone robs a bank and I ride int he car with them, I’m also a criminal.

Now if we were adults with regular paying  jobs, would we pay for cable TV or any of these services?

C-1R-1 said that if that’s the case then yes but if I lose my job I wasted my money for momentarily entertainment but an economical crisis can last for way more.

This also happens with books. ebooks can be bought and they are very efficient but these can also be downloaded illegally.

Videos and DVD’s have a distribution problem. When you buy a DVD in Europe you can’t play it in a DVD here because these are divided by regions. It is illegal to hack these to see any region DVDs.

Blu-rays also have region codes

 

Then C-8R-1 says that it’s become a need we don’t always have money for this. Take into consideration that productions costs are expensive and so they make these services because they have to. It is a necessity. So really piracy can’t always be seen as something bad; in reality it’s not all black and white, there is a whole gray area here.

Art usually feeds from past work. Mash up is very evident nowadays in art. We take a lot of things from other art works and make something new for example Marcel Duchamp and his ready-made “L.H.O.O.Q.”.

This is an example of good priacy.

 

Now is it fair for us to pay again for things we already paid for just because they got broken? If we want it we most probably have to.
This means that probably all of these copyright services or rules are an annoyance.

Thank you Creative Commons for innitiatives that make downloading and information sharing easier.

 

Now we know what we officially know: that we pretty much are mostly all criminals since we do illegal things.

Because of these actions difficulty we might get sued. But not everyone is an avid downloader. Now for incredibly vivid downloaders who download a lot of things, they might encounter problems.

Even is The US in collleges there have been cases with severe legal issues.

 

And this has been another class in another day in college. After this, class was over since well it was about time for it to be over. After this well we just wait for another class.

https://signup.netflix.com/

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