Persuasive Essay

Should People Who Download Music And Movies Illegally Be Punished?
Reynaldo Colon
Comm/215- Essentials of College Writing
3/2/2015
Colette Wanless-Sobel
Should People Who Download Music And Movies Illegally Be Punished?
Downloading music and movies illegally is a huge problem that has presented itself with the introduction of the internet. I believe people that download music and movies illegally should be punished. They are breaking the law, stealing money from the entertainment business, and can cause people to lose their jobs.

The individuals that download music and movies illegally are breaking the law. Music and movies come with a copyright law to prevent people from copying them. The people that break this law copy and distribute them in peer to peer(P2P) networks to share with others. It may seem harmless to go online and download an album or movie but by doing this you are breaking the law. Breaking this law can come at a high cost. According to "The Law" (2015), "Criminal penalties can run up to five years in prison and/or $250,000 in fines, even if you didn’t do it for monetary or financial or commercial gain". That is a high price to pay compared to the 10 or 15 dollars you can spend on getting the album or movie.

When a person downloads music or movies illegally they are stealing money from those in the entertainment business. Stealing from the entertainment business by downloading music or movies online is the same as stealing merchandise from a retail store. This has really hurt the music industry a lot. They have lost billions of dollars due to piracy. "One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes that global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers' earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes" ("Riaa Faq", 2015). Anyone that becomes a part of this loss should be punished.

People are losing their jobs over people downloading music and movies illegally. By downloading movies we are robbing the artist and actors that are part of these musical and movie projects. The money these industries make not only pay the artist and actors but also pay all the people behind the scenes. That includes the producers, directors, cameramen, and everyone else that assist. People that commit these criminal acts are stealing from all of these individuals. Shastry (2010), "A study into Internet piracy by a Paris-based consultancy published on Wednesday showed that 1.2 million jobs in the European Union could be lost over the next five years if more is not done to clamp down on illegal downloading". If the industry doesn't make enough money it is not able to pay these workers and it can even get to the point when they will not be able to hire these workers or pay them what they deserve.

Of course there are individuals that believe there shouldn't be a punishment to those that download illegal music or movie. They believe they aren't doing

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