¶ … Sharing

ETHICAL ISSUES and INTERNET TECHNOLOGY: FILE SHARING Unauthorized file sharing is very difficult to justify because it is a form of intellectual property theft. Copyrights in works of art (including music and movies) are extremely valuable, which is precisely why they are recognized and protected by law. In fact, the value of works covered by copyrights are considered so fundamental that, ever since 1978, copyrights are automatically granted to authors of written (and other forms of) work. Registering works with the U.S. Copyright Office makes cases of infringement much more easy to prove and triggers rights to certain types of punitive damages that are not available without formal copyright registration, but the author owns exclusive rights to the work as of the moment it is recorded on paper or on any other medium. In principle, copying a CD to a tape or copying a movie from a purchased format to additional formats is also a violation of copyright, but in comparison to the financial damage and loss caused by the widespread practice of downloading music and movies through illegal file sharing over the Internet, those types of copyright violations are inconsequential. That is because where customers copy art from CDs and DVDs, in most cases, at least the original copy is purchased legitimately. However, in the vast majority of cases of illegal file sharing online, hundreds and sometimes many thousands of copies are transferred from each original. Even worse, in most cases, even the original file is an illegitimate copy, meaning that the artist who provided the work to all those consumers never benefits from even a single sale.

Whereas both types of copyright infringement are equally wrong from a moral principle, the online file sharing version is capable of completely destroying the entire music and movie industries by making it impossible to generate a profit or even to recoup the expenses of works produced by artists at great cost.