Week5: Online Theft- Erkan's thoughts

Years ago, there was the NAPSTER case; years of battling between the recording industry and the Internet users who wanted to share their music files with other Internet users. In the end, the recording industry won on behalf of protecting the intellectual property of singers and song-writers and the Napster was banned from distributing music. Today, a similar battle is taking place between the movie industry and those who want to share their video files and movies with the other people online. I understand both the movie and recording industries' argument that they want to protect the professionals' artistic rights and the financial profits they expect to make from what they produce. In this regard, I support the court's decision to close down the NAPSTER because that company was trying to make profit without creating anything, putting any effort but rather by simply distributing copyrighted material without authorization.
However, I don't think the law should intervene in individual cases, like charging individuals with crime of stealing music or movies. Because I believe if a person can access a website and manage to download a couple of mp3s and a movie, and distribute it to a few friends for entertainment, this should not be considered as crime. I think it is the music or recording companies' responsibility, or the responsibility of the website that hosts the product, to protect these material against individual access. If a person can finds a way to access the material even when it is protected by some online security measurement, I think this too should not be considered as crime, because that shows the person's skill to use technology to bypass the security.
On the other hand, if those who break the security codes and download movies and copy and distribute them in lare quantities to make profit out of it, this must be considered crime, as this would be stealing intellectual property for making illegal profit. Such people should definetely be charged with crime for doing it and must be sentenced.
To sum, the law for Internet theft should be enforced to those who intend to gain financial (or any other kind of) profit by stealing others' intellectual property and in doing so cause financial loss to other people.

Deniz K, and Rabia
Thanks again for contributing to the discussion on this matter. I still expect the others to state their opinions on the blogger...