Analysis: A Pirate But Not A Thief

In the argument “A Pirate but Not a Thief: What Does Stealing Mean in a Digital Environment” By Alex Mullen, the author did a great job stating his side on whether or not downloading a movie from an internet torrent site is stealing or not. The Author stated his reasoning using definitions and examples to convince his audience. He used his own experiences to show how downloading a movie did not affect himself or the creator or owner of that movie. However, the author did not convince me that using a torrent site is perfectly ok and believe the author, although very convincing in his words, was not successful in convincing me that it is ok to take other peoples work freely from sites on the internet, therefore, making him a pirate and a thief.

The U.S. Congress was first introduced to the NET Act in 1990 to deter people from downloading files by threatening large fines. With the internet and electronic technology growing quickly the NET Act passed into law by 1997. The NET Act being passed made it a federal crime to distribute files. If more than ten copies of material that is being copyrighted is being distributed within 180 days, the person making the copies can be punished with a fine or time in jail. So legally using a torrent site to receive free movie files is against the law and consider to be stealing. Although the author could be protected under fair use because he was using the copy for school and it did not substantially affect the value of the work. However, if one person downloads the movie, then we know there are probably many more doing the same therefore the downloading becomes bigger than just borrowing. In the argument, the author states that he does not see what he was doing as stealing, although he states his other options for renting the movie through a reliable and authorized site. He also claims to have deleted the movie shortly after watching and doing his assignment on the movie downloaded. Deleting the file did not make the illegal downloading of the file ok. It is still a crime to use torrent sites to download movies and considered to be an act of piracy. The author also stated that when using

The author was almost convincing enough to be successful in his argument, but looking at the law and what it means to pirate files from the internet convinced me that he was wrong. Although it was not a common thing for the author to do he had other options for getting the film he needed and could have taken a different path to attain the film. There was no mention of copyright laws in the argument which could have been useful and assisted in the argument 's success. The author was unable to convince me that piracy is not stealing due to the definitions of the two being similar and due to the laws against piracy and copyright