War On Entertainment

In a recent tidal wave of political fighting, the new flavor of the day has been aimed against the entertainment industry by greedy lawmakers. There has been a great deal of talk recently about how to fight against online piracy and illegally downloading music and movies. File sharing is nothing new, and I find it hilarious that these lawmakers are making it seem like it is.

I think many people must have forgotten that file sharing started much earlier than in the 1990s, and bands that had created a following as a result of it like Metallica must have suffered amnesia as a result. The original file sharing has been going on since the days of Jimi Hendrix and Woodstock, when people would record the shows on cassette tape and share it with other music lovers. Companies like Sony, Maxell, and others made probably billions of dollars from the sales of blank VHS, CD, and DVD discs.

None of these items were sold with the intention of a music or movie fan just sitting at home enjoying it in solitude. Music and movies were meant to be shared with the public and it is absurd that the government now wants to crack down on online piracy. All of us have downloaded or obtained music and movies legally or illegally at one time, or another. Where do people think mix tapes originated?

I had read an article on the website Mashable (www.mashable.com), where the topic of course spoke about this very thing dealing with online piracy. The interesting thing about the article was that it mentioned that countries like China have been illegally downloading music and movies for decades. I am sure that everything that has happened in the United States has already blown over in other parts of the world.


According to Christina Warren, first run movies hit the streets of China before they are ever seen in the local theaters (Warren, 2012). This has been going on since the beginning of the Entertainment industry. The real pirates that are downloading and selling intellectual property illegally are going to continue doing so regardless of what our country feels about it. Most of the people that are complaining about this stuff has already made their millions of dollars, so there really isn’t any harm being done to them.

The real harm is to the consumer who suffers from non-accessibility to their favorite band or actor. The result has always been the same whether the material was received legally or not. The consumer has always been the backbone of this industry and we all need to remember that. There has not been one musician or actor that has had success in entertainment without some illegal file sharing of some sort as an added help.

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-and-pipa-wont-stop-piracy/