Sharing Pirated MP3’s :: File Sharing Essays

Sharing Pirated MP3’s The sharing of MP3 music 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 MP3’s and other computer programs. College students are suspected to be one of the major culprits of People to People file sharing. A survey was conducted in order to obtain an understanding of why students of James Madison 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 determine why, in light of the ethical issue and possible legal repercussions, do JMU students still trade illegally pirated music? The survey was composed of ten multiple choice questions and administered to twenty random students. The students were taken from various 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 debate on a couple of the questions. Several students were kind enough to give a few extra minutes 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 downloading MP3’s for free is ethical, was the most thought provoking question. Nineteen of the twenty students surveyed downloaded MP3’s. Fourteen said they felt it was unethical to download the MP3’s, 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.