music piracy: a moral battleground
TRANSCRIPT
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7/30/2019 Music Piracy: A Moral Battleground
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Music Piracy:A Moral Battleground
Justin Ahles
ENC 3331
Thomas Wright
November 13, 2012
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Virtual Piracy is the unauthorized use of anothers production, invention or
conception (typically involving copyright infringement).
Websters Dictionary
Tackling Virtual PiracyApproach
My approach, in the simplest form, is an appeal to ethos. In my video I
will be performing a song called I Wont Give Up - Jason Mraz. My reasoning for
choosing this song is that I will only have to change a few words (staying genuine to
the song). During the video I will have cleanly transitioned photographs of
musicians (on a local scale) that piracy effects as well as a small quote from any of
the pictured musicians who wish to comment. My approach to spreading this
material will be an ironic one; Im going to place the song on YouTube, with a free
download link. Incorporated into the small tweaks I make to the lyrics will be some
of my researched ideas and statistics. Throughout the verses, Ill be disbursing
lesser-known information about piracy directly to an audience that may see no
wrong in it; the information being heard will be directly related to the images Im
compiling of local musicians all-struggling for work. My approach will not be a
condemning one (Shame on you!), but rather an approach to enlightening (Did you
know?).
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Largely my approach will include information that is well spread over all
three major appeals in rhetoric. Its not hard to say my entire assignment in itself an
appeal to ethos in that Im covering the moral foreground of stealing. In order to
clarify my ethos related assignment, I will be using both pathos and logos in
making my case. As mentioned before, there are many statistics (too many to
include in my assignment) that represent the hardships both economically (revenue,
taxes, etc.) as well as emotionally (as people suffer lost jobs, lawsuits, prison time,
etc.).
Audience
When formulating my action I was truly forced to examine the psyche of my
audience. Firstly I was forced to recognize that my colleagues and I make up more
than 90% of the music being stolen from the internet (ages 15-21); making this
topic all the more relevant to those I fraternize with daily. Interestingly enough, in
our same age group, less than 1 in every 10 people interviewed failed to see any
moral shortcoming from illegally downloading music. (Barna Group, 2011) I am
hoping to develop a sense of understanding in those individuals to see that this is
not a victimless crime.
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Evolution of Piracy
Another aspect I needed to understand was that Piracy has quickly changed
in the last 20 years. Piracy in its most recent form (Media Piracy) fell on to the music
industry in 1991it did not however become a plaguing epidemic until 1998. In
1998 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing) DMCA implemented two separate
treaties from 1996 that were geared towards criminalizing production and
distribution of devices, services or technologies. This was an early attempt to
heighten the penalties for distributing copyrighted materials. Essentially the DMCA
held individuals liable for either directly handling copyrighted material or for
indirectly hosting such material online.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)
My action against Music Piracy is based almost entirely around my audience.
Theres not much that can be changed with a wag of the finger to my audience. A
negative approach is not normally the strongest routemore effectively, I want to
expel the disassociation my audience feels to committing a theft. There was a string
of commercials I found strongly effective that came out about 2 years back (played
most frequently in movie theaters) that showed someone breaking a cars window to
steal their radio. Then a voice over states, You wouldnt break into and steal from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing -
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someones carPiracy is Stealing. These commercials were very effective for me
because they rid you of the barrier between the product and those your stealing
from. Its easy to ignore the connection between a free song and the artist suffering
for itmy plan is to associate these two in the audiences mind. If you take one, you
hurt the other so to speak.
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