by Alan Bonnici

Created on: June 10, 2009

Electronic Piracy (I will refer to it as piracy in this document) is the unauthorized use of material that is or can be digitized. This material is covered by copyright law. Copyright gives the copyright owner exclusive rights to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works. Piracy in the context being discussed here is not limited to illegally obtaining material without a copyright holder's permission, but also covers aspects-some of which may be included in the wider definition of copyright-such as making multiple copies of material for own use, sharing material with family, friends and complete strangers, ownership of acquired material, converting of material between different formats for different devices and watching material that cannot be legally obtained by any other way. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a group most notably associated with those who are against piracy. The RIAA is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. In this document, the term RIAA will be used to identify all those who would like to restrict content. This article reflects what many people on the other side of the fence think.

The group who are pro-piracy can be divided further; those who profiteer by selling unauthorized copyrighted material; those who knowingly purchase counterfeit goods and those who download material to watch themselves. This report will discuss the views of the latter group which I will call the down-use persons (DUP).

1. DUP rebuke those who sell copyrighted material.

2. There is a conceptual difference between those who download material and those who purchase counterfeit copies of media. The generalizations by the RIAA that downloading content funds crime syndicates and terrorists groups is wrong and is intended to mislead. The majority of people who download content do so for personal consumption and not for profit. The persons who share content do it either because they are mechanically forced to do so by the platform they source material from or out of a sense of community. The absolute majority of folk who consume content are not associated with any form of organized crime. Proof of this are the various law suits instigated by the RIAA against DUP. They are simple people ranging from children through to students through to adults through to elderly folk.

3. Reports linking piracy to terrorist groups and organized crime are heavily over inflated. For example, the report "Film Piracy,

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