Sharing Pirated MP3’s :: File Sharing Essays

Sharing Pirated MP3s The sharing of MP3 practice of medicine and its legality is a major issue in our legal system at this time. It has been a battle in the courts for several years now. It all began with the legendary downfall of the original bad boy of sharing, Napster. Despite the legal actions of the music industry, the file sharing community continues to thrive. Millions of users still log on to a handful of programs and illegally trade MP3s and other computer programs. College students are surmise to be one of the major culprits of People to People file sharing. A field was conducted in order to obtain an understanding of why students of James capital of Wisconsin University would use People to People sharing programs. More importantly, it was to gain insight into the ethical outlook of students in concern to the sharing of MP3 music files. The survey attempts to model why, in light of the ethical issue and possible legal repercussions, do JMU students still trad e illegally pirated music? The survey was composed of ten triple choice questions and administered to twenty random students. The students were taken from divers(a) areas around the campus in order to obtain a wide variety of responses. It sought to have respondents who were of various age, race, and sex. The surveys were handed out in a classroom, a dining hall, and an events committee meeting for the University Programming Board. Students remained anonymous to the administer and their confidentiality was assured. Most of the students filled out the survey with relative ease and only had to disputation on a couple of the questions. Several students were kind enough to give a few extra legal proceeding of their time for various follow up questions. I began to ask students which questions gave them the most trouble. Many felt the last question, asking if transfering MP3s for free is ethical, was the most notion provoking question. Nineteen of the twenty studen ts surveyed downloaded MP3s. Fourteen said they felt it was unethical to download the MP3s, yet most of them continue to download. The question seemed to stimulate an ethical debate inside the respondents of which they had trouble answering. A vast majority of the students simply do not care about pushing ethics aside and continue to download pirated music.