Blog Entry 1

One idea throughout the course so far that struck a cord was the whole piracy issue. Piracy is definitely illegal but yet is still on the rise since people can get movies, music, etc for free versus paying for it in the store. Also, with today’s economy it is only probably that a lot of people are going to be doing this in order to “save money.” However, from this class it is easy to see that people should not be pirating things since it is something that someone else had made.
Despite the whole idea of it being wrong to pirate music because it is someonelse’s work, people can actually be fined heavily. There have been reports of people who were sent a letter in the mail saying that a music or movie agency was going to be taking them to court. Or, some people would receive a letter from Time Warner Cable or whichever Internet provider that they had noticed there has been huge file downloads lately. Pirating is a risky way to freeload on music and movies. However, many people are still willing to do it since they think “they will not get caught.” Their belief is that there are so many other people pirating that there is no chance they will get caught.
I personally do not pirate anything because quite honestly the risks outweigh the benefits in my opinion. Also, I think that if you like and artist or movie enough wouldn’t you want to support it? Most bands make enough money obviously but it is still a job that they should get paid for all of their work. If I was in a band and knew people were stealing my music I would be a little mad. To me, it would be like slapping me in the face and running off with my work. It is just such a big disrespect to whomever if they do not condone you getting their work for free.
The course so far has definitely been very informative. Even though this was the only topic I talked about, I have enjoyed the other topics mentioned as well. To be honest, I think this class has exceeded my expectations for being an ethics class. My initial thought is that I thought it would be very boring and not that informative compared to what I already knew.