Is Piracy Good or Bad?

Is piracy good or bad? It seems a simple enough question, but I was unable to answer it with a definite yes or no. I needed to know more about the issue. I decided to scour the internet myself and see what others had to say about this issue of piracy. Almost all of the sites, essays, and the one study I read started off saying the same thing. That stealing is fundamentally wrong, and no one should do it. However, piracy, no matter of its negative effects, has some positive outcomes that should not be overlooked. These positives ranged from software being improved to increased sales due to word of mouth. All of this made me think about what was discussed in class. If it is on the internet, where access to it is simply a click away, can anyone lay legitimate claim to it? Can anyone say, "That belongs to me, don't touch it, unless you pay for it first."

Among the most interesting essays I read was one that was written by Mark Pesce, Lecturer in Interactive Media from the Australian Film Television and Radio School. In his essay, Piracy is Good?, he uses the network premier of Battlestar Galatica. It aired in Britian three months before it was scheduled to air in the United States on the SciFi channel. The night that the first episode aired, it was available for download and thus pirated by thousands of people, most of which were American SciFi channel fans, who according to Pesce, are "...young and decidedly geeky. They are masters of media; they can find ways to get things they shouldn’t have" (Pesce, par. 2). By the time that the first episode aired on the SciFi channel that January, a good number of people had already seen the entire season, thirteen episodes in all. But according to Pesce, this didn't hurt the show's popularity at all. That in fact, "it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on 14 January, and see for themselves" (Pesce, par. 6). From there the show only increased in popularity.

Mark Pesce goes one to argue that it is naive to think that viewers are going to stop illegally downloading television programs just because they are told to. However, he does recognize that there is a problem with letting it continue happening as it is now, and that a new solution needs to be implemented so that, once again, everyone is happy.

Works Cited

Pesce, Mark. "Piracy is Good? New Models for the Distribution of Television Programming." Mindjack. 13 May 2005. 10 Apr 2007.

* I am not done going through his economic plan, and will add that when I have completed going through it. I am also trying to find a full copy of Information Systems Research - International Software Piracy: Analysis of Key Issues and Impacts.