Bae Young Ha/No free lunch anymore/Thursday 56

No free lunch anymore "Illegal downloading, No!" A Korean singer BOA was saying this when I was watching TV about ten years ago. Intellectual property rights are getting more likely to be infringed as the internet has been distributed fast all around the world. Personally I was once even caught by a lawyer because I shared a movie on a file sharing program. Sharing intellectual properties is much easier than sharing tangible properties. However, I think we shouldn't share movies and music on and off the internet against intellectual property laws. First of all, making a piece of movies and music requires huge efforts. A lot of workers are put into the creating process and a great amount of money is invested. Let's take an example of the newly released movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron. 250 million dollars are put into making this movie. If all people illegally download and share this movie instead of going to the theater or borrowing DVDs, the movie maker will go bankrupt. They didn't put all of their efforts and money for nothing. So the movie maker has the right to charge you money when you download a movie. Moreover, being easy to copy movies and music doesn't mean you're allowed to do that. Some people copy them because they can reproduce it with only a couple of clicks and it's difficult to regulate them. People don't take duplicating seriously due to the easiness of it. I also used to illegally download intellectual properties because it was too easy to think it was a crime. But the fact that a house is unlocked doesn't mean that you are ok to go in and steal the things in it. You should be more aware of the seriousness of downloading and copying movies and music illegally. Lastly, illegally duplicating intangible assets is not basically different from stealing tangible assets. We might feel that it is a waste of money when we pay for intangible products such as movies and music. This is partly because people don't feel like obtaining something that exists in real. Intangible products are not reduced or the owner doesn't lose the ownership even if people reproduce it illegally. These characteristics, however, can't be an excuse for downloading and sharing illegally. The owners' efforts to make movies and music are the same as, or more than the efforts of those who make tangible products. Downloading and sharing movies and music has to do with laws and ethics on the internet. It's not been so long since the Internet was universalized throughout the world. So we should make and settle proper internet-related laws and establish desirable internet ethics. I think we are still in such a process. To make ourselves aware of the significance of intellectual property rights, we should keep in mind that movie or music producers put much efforts in their products. In addition, copying illegally is a crime and it's the same as stealing tangible goods. We need to pay the price for what we got.