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Alister Pouw
Anthony Giambusso
Business Ethics: PHI 3360-014
10/29/16
Digital Technology and Ownership
Introduction
The multimedia industry was previously built around physical products. This is because
music, videos, and games were all sold through physical products such as impact disks and other
forms of physical storage. In the present times, multimedia has taken a more digital format with
sales and rentals being carried out on an information only basis. The result of this shift has been
an increase in the rate of dubbing, both legal and illegal. Multimedia products include eBooks,
music, videos, video games and television programs among others. All these are faced with the
copying challenge, particularly when considering the illegal copying aspect. Digital information
is easy to copy as well as to distribute through either downloading or online streaming. It is
because of this ease of illegal copying and distribution that many methods have been initiated for
the prevention of illegal distribution of multimedia files.
Laws and regulations have been made for the protection of media from illegal access and
distribution due to the many negative aspects of this. Besides the economic damages that arise
from illegal copying and distribution, many other impacts can also be connected to this practice.
Copyright laws are aimed at protecting the rights of the creators of media. There have been many
pros and cons associated with different methods of media protection. Not any particular method
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is suitable for effectively addressing the challenge of illegal copying and distribution of media
files. Despite the many advantages associated with each of the methods, they also pose
significant challenges for those who wish to legally acquire the media files in distribution. As
such, there have been proposals that copyright protection laws should take into consideration the
rights of the legal media purchasers. Because pirating media is inherently wrong this essay
explores the need for providing copyright protection as well as the different strategies that are
often put in place for the protection of media files.
The Need for Digital Media Protection
The shift in distribution format of media has made it easy to access and distribute media
files across the world. As such, there is great need for access to such media files to be controlled.
Copyright laws are meant to protect intellectual property rights of the creators of pieces
considered to be intellectual property. Music, video, video games, eBooks and other forms of
digital media such as software all fall in the category that needs intellectual property rights
protection. There are some exceptions to these examples, such as free online downloads and
media at libraries. Per the Congressional Budget Office, copyright laws require that only the
individual content owners should be able to have sole ownership of the means of production of
the content, access for distribution and general digital content access for personal use (6). For
digitally encoded music, only the copyright owners have the true ownership rights of the content
in question. It is important that while planning for the digital media protection, limits have to be
placed on the laws such as for the rental contents.
There are various reasons behind reliance on the intellectual property laws for the
protection of digital media. The media creators need to benefit from their works economically.
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Raman (par. 3) reports that this is only possible when they can get funds from the sale of their
work. Through illegal copying and distribution of digital media, the creators of the works are not
paid for the works they do. With free pirated media, the number of people willing to spend
money on live shows, going to the cinema, or even buying a video game, will decrease
significantly. This is indirectly taking money from the creators of this media. In addition to this,
the enforcement of copyright laws can also help in enhancing the creativity of various
participants in the industry. For the owners of the copyrights, creativity is enhanced as they
receive the benefits of their previous works. On the other hand, the absence of copyrights gives
the pirates the opportunity to take advantage of the works done by others and to gain from this.
In this way, their own creativity is hampered and they cannot produce their own works.
Similarly, pirating can discourage the owners of the digital media from creating other new works
