Ch. 18 Response

Ever since the day that music, movies, and other digital media went digital and became available online, there has been the ongoing debate with file sharing programs. Personally in my opinion, I think the thought behind the idea of file and music sharing is a brilliant idea. In fact, I used to use file-sharing systems to get free music and movies called LimeWire and MP3 Rocket. These programs were awesome originally, but the more I used them the more I realized that these programs aren’t so great. My guilty conscience made me realize that this was essentially stealing from artists and directors. For that reason, I no longer support file-sharing systems unless they require a membership fee. Today, I use a musical database known as Spotify to listen to my music, and I pay ten bucks a month for its service. With this I am assured that the right people are getting paid for the music I listen to.

With that being said, I personally believe that more copyright laws and enforcement need to be placed on these types of systems because too many people are going without getting paid the money that most of them use to provide for themselves. The music and movies that are produced are a part of someone else’s ideas that is shared with us for our entertainment, however, I believe that we do need to provide those responsible with their due credit. I know if I were in some of these artists’ shoes I would want to get credit for all my work. This issue is just an expansion on plagiarism that is introduced in grade school when we were taught about academic integrity. To me, academic integrity is staying true to one’s ideas alone and not stealing others’ ideas and work and claiming for oneself, thus earning a grade that was not truly earned. This is an issue I feel very strongly about, and I hope that in the future more things can be done to help control copyright and academic integrity issues.