The Case Against Pirating Movies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Case Against Pirating Movies - Essay Example Corporations like Amazon, Vudu, Hudu, and Netflix are four such companies that provide subscription services to movies and television shows. Movie piracy is unethical because retail companies lose revenue from potential rentals and sales; those connected with making the film lose royalty revenue; it is against the law, even though the general population continues to pay ever higher prices to attend movie theaters. In 2009, it was reported (DGA web) that from BitTorrent in 2009, there were 11 million downloads of Star Trek (version 2009), 9.4 million downloads of The Hangover, 7.2 million downloads of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 6.9 million downloads of Knowing (DGA web). If one were to put a price of a DVD for each of these, say at $15.00, the financial loss would run about $5 billion dollars or more in lost revenue in a DVD sales format. What would not be mentioned here is the revenue generated by sales of DVDs which provide royalties to performers and producers (including all those who worked on the film overall), and those retail companies who provide rental and online purchases of those movies to the general public. The Pirate Bay is an online worldwide file-sharing website for which there were 25 million users in 2009 and where pirated films could be shared online. The television series Heroes was also considered one of the most pirated series in 2009, downloaded from BitTorrent (DGA web ). The result is that, for those who are technologically adept at hacking and sharing information, the piracy of movie and television shows is a big business. It is also interesting to note that one of the attributes to encouraging piracy, particularly of large-file movies, is the increase and development of larger broadband widths in Internet delivery. The years 2004 to 2008 showed about a 27% drop in DVD and VHS sales (Danaher, Smith, and Telang 14).