Teaching the Ethics of Online Copyright Issues
It’s been awhile since the astronomical fees levied by the music industry on people who had illegally downloaded popular songs made international headlines. Last week, however, we got a reminder of the risks of pirating copyrighted content.
Voltage Pictures, the production company that produced the Oscar winning film The Hurt Locker, announced that they plan to sue more than 5,000 fans who participated in file sharing networks to illegally access the movie. Defendants, who have thus far only been identified only by their IP address, will receive notices regarding the suit shortly.
Internet users are all ages, but the highest density of users are teens and young adults. According to a December 2009 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 93 percent of 18-29 year olds are online. Furthermore, more than half of adults in the United States use the Internet to download or watch video content. While there are many ways to access video content legally (even as I write this post, my husband is watching the crazy zombie movie Dead Snow using Netflix’s streaming video feature), there are a multitude of sites that facilitate illegal file sharing. For a media junkie like me, surfing the Web can sometimes feel like I’m a kid again let loose in a candy store.
Regardless of my personal feelings on copyright laws, using file sharing sites to exchange content is both illegal and subject to major fines. However, my students seem to regard copyright laws much like they do the act of driving five miles an hour above the speed limit – illegal, yes. But everybody does it, right?
When I teach social media strategies I inject a healthy dose of basic ethical theory in the lesson plan, but I just don’t think that my application of the teachings of Kant and Aristotle are getting through. The punishment for pirating seems so remote that I tend to fall back on more opaque ethical theories to discuss reasons not to take advantage of the free but illegal content available online.
How do you teach students responsible use of Internet resources? Do you think this latest lawsuit will be the concrete evidence needed to convince young people that copyright infringement is serious business?
1 Comment
Matt Sherman
Monday, 7th June 2010 at 1:10 pm
I realize this is pretty nit-picky, but I would say that “using file sharing sites to exchange [copyrighted] content is both illegal and subject to major fines.” Using file sharing services only becomes an issue when protected content is being passed around. There actually are legitimate reasons to use file sharing services.
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