Conduct a Web search on the ethics of copying music or software from another person or the Internet. Discuss some of the information that you find. Some ideas you might want to consider include the following (note – you do not need to answer all of these questions):

Copying and sharing music is not legal. “The Recording Industry Assn. of America argues that it’s illegal to share or download music without permission because the labels’ copyrights give them exclusive rights to distribute and make copies of their songs.” [ CITATION Eri03 \l 1033 ] Sharing music and files is a very common practice, especially with the younger generation. Some people do not believe it is illegal, because so many people do it. I do believe it is immoral to share files, because it takes a profit out of the artist pocket. I know I have shared and received illegal files a couple times in my life, but never really thought about the consequences of it.

I feel to avoid having music leaked, a lot of artist now are not announcing when they are releasing music and are surprising fans with new albums without any warnings or promotion. I think when it comes to sharing music files can hurt and/or help the artist. It can hurt an artist who is not seeing any type of profit from sales, but put a lot of money into promoting the album. On the other hand, if the artist is not known, file sharing is a quick way to help spread the word and get the unknown artist heard.

I don’t believe one should be prosecuted off the first offense of file sharing, but just given a warning. In the case of Capitol vs. Thomas, the defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was required to pay $1.9 million for sharing 24 songs on a file-sharing program. I feel the punishment Mrs. Thomas received was ridiculous. I don’t feel sharing 24 songs should cause on to lose their livelihood. I feel that the website should be fined for allowing users to share files illegally.

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