Copyright & File Sharing: A Never Ending War
Hau Le
National University
Law 304
Professor Reeber

Abstract
Nowadays, with “tools” like the Internet, Bluetooth and Cloud technology…the practice of sharing has been greatly encouraged and supported. However, distributing or copying stuffs online for free is not always considered “safe” because internet file sharing is allegedly connected with legal rights issues. Giving approval to internet file sharing at the same time as preventing violation of copyright is quite a dilemma.
There is no restriction of what you can upload or download. The legal issues in file sharing involve violation of copyright laws as digital copies of copyrighted materials are transferred between users. Thus, this is the case where you either choose to deliberately break the rules or you do not. If you hold the copyright for a particular file, you have your right to share that file in whatever way you see fit. On the other hand, if you distribute or download copyright-protected works of others who have not or did not give you their permission, you are engaging in online piracy which can be charged with and possibly convicted of copyright infringement, a felony. Not only that, let say one person uploads a file without the permission of the copyright holder on a free sharing website, the original file is still on the uploader's computer. If someone else downloads that file then it becomes another copy of the copy of the original by the downloader. We must understand that sharing is from a fixed material object whereas unauthorized copying is creating counterfeits. Every counterfeited file is worthless and that is a catastrophic destruction of the economy.
Illegal file sharing contributes a devastating disaster to the media production industry; this only proves that there is nothing new under the sun. What motives lie behind peoples’ downloading behavior that ultimately leads to uncontrollable illegal file sharing is still a big puzzle which we are trying to solve. This question is significant because there is a strong correlation between internet downloading behavior and copyright laws. For instance, many downloaders falsely believe that the majority