The Pirates of 2010

Remember Napster? Back in middle school, Napster was probably the coolest thing to hit the Internet since America Online and instant messaging. Unfortunately for teenaged music lovers, it was back to saving up money for CD’s and iTunes songs when Napster was inevitably shut down for being illegal. Apparently, it was against the law to download or distribute music over the Internet because no one was paying for the songs, thus making CD’s completely unnecessary for our generation. That CD resurgence was short-lived, however, as countless other peer-to-peer sharing programs popped up, only to be shut down shortly after.
 
Since the advent of these programs, they have gone above and beyond just sharing music, now offering audio books, TV shows, and movies to anyone who wants to risk federal recognition as an illegal downloader, with your IP address recorded in a national database and hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially owed if the MPAA decides to prosecute the offenders. Usually, a sternly worded letter is sent off to the thief warning them to cease and desist, but for a few brave children who ignored the warning, a lawsuit did in fact happen and some even had Internet access revoked.
 
Over the past few years, downloading movies and TV shows has become as commonplace as waiting until the light comes on to fill your gas tank. And for a lot of people, the consequences for the ignored gas tank seem much more severe. To prove that point, a group of hackers took down the MPAA’s website on Sunday in a show of control over the people who police internet downloads. While keeping track of copyright infringement certainly sounds important, at a time when there’s a recession and so many people are struggling, couldn’t those resources be used elsewhere? I just don’t see the big deal behind downloading movies, I get that it’s a copyright infringement and there are “download kingpins” who steal hundreds of thousands of movies, but there’s a difference between going after them and going after the kid down the block who wants to watch a movie his mother won’t buy him. Use your resources and find the masterminds running the show and stop wasting money on everyday people who, in the grand scheme of things, aren’t really affecting the millions of dollars brought in by the film industry. Would it really be so awful if movies were free to download? The money raked in by theater sales would still be present, and maybe if the MPAA wasn’t so busy wasting money and resources on pimply computer nerds, they could use that money to try and dig out of the hole this country finds itself in. Is the newest Napster really a national crisis?