According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, piracy is “the act of illegally copying someone’s product or invention without permission”. Indeed, to be simple and direct; piracy refers to robbery. And when software, a movie, a digital copy of a book or rather anything related to computers at all is stolen, that act is better defined as E-piracy.
The World Wide Web is awash with such e-piracy, which cause a huge loss to the creators as well as the vendors of the specific software and of course, the users themselves. Even the users are losers, simply because even though they get the copies free of cost, they are forced to stay without the support from the parent company, which makes it difficult for them to repair or update the software or the documents.
Thinking about the effectiveness of laws against e-piracy in Europe, we should first consider a small country called Sweden that is situated in the same Europe we speak of where piracy is referred to as political and religious. Yes, there is a political party called the Pirate Party as well as a religion called Kopimism and both these groups, propagate file-sharing even if it infringes copyrights.
Well, file-sharing is fine when you share your own files, or copies of files made by their original authors to get them across to the people ‘free of cost’. Creating a digital copy of a file that is copyrighted and sharing that copy is simply piracy, which should be punishable by law simply because that would be infringing the creative rights of an individual and degrading his work by simply giving it out for free as though it’s not even worth peanuts.
Still not getting the message? Go on and join the Kopimists, but don’t forget to share your own files, too.
-Don Joe Martin is an Indian engineering student based in Sharjah
