An Analysis of New Media, Technology, and the Piracy Culture

An Analysis of New Media, Technology, and the Piracy Culture
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An Analysis of New Media, Technology, and the Piracy Culture
Background
The world today is characterized by many changes, including technological advancement and the rise of new media, which has continued to shape the modern world. The introduction of cable television, the widened access to the internet, and the increased digitization of media have given rise to new media trends and attracted the attention of scholars. As Lister et al. (2009) reveals, there has been an increase in the migration of media content and immense changes in how media is produced, distributed, and consumed around the globe. The rise of new media has affected not only producers but also consumers of media such that now consumers can be producers of media as well. It has also changed how society approaches intellectual properties and intellectual property rights. As Lessig (2006) discusses in his book, there has been an increasing debate about intellectual property with the rise of new media and the advancement of technology. Now more than ever, governments are getting involved in protecting intellectual property through the law. This is because the rise of new media and technologies has been accompanied by a shift in the piracy culture. The internet has facilitated digital reproduction, and new technologies have been developed to facilitate storage, re-use, and reproduction of digital content at very low costs (Lister et al., 2009). More and more people are copying and sharing digital content, giving rise to questions of ownership. However, artistic or creative content is being copyrighted, and those looking to reproduce artistic work are paying royalties (Brown, 2003). Yet, the culture of piracy is still rampant in today’s society and continues to harm the creative industries. This shows that there exists a relationship between new media, technology, and the piracy culture. This research paper aims to analyze this relationship and establish how practitioners in the creative industries can balance this relationship to protect the value of their work.
Statement of the Research Problem and Guiding Research Questions
Both practitioners acknowledge the importance of protecting the value of creative work in creative industries and governments from around the world. This is why copyright laws and intellectual property rights exist around the world. However, as Poster (2006) reveals, copyright laws and intellectual property rights are constantly being challenged every day. There seems to be little understanding and low consensus about what characterizes a piracy culture because the rise of new media and the continued advancement in technology is constantly changing how media content is being produced, shared, consumed, and pirated. Although piracy, in general, is characterized by stealing someone else’s artistic/creative work, there have been changes in how this is done and for what purpose. As Lessig (2006) indicates, some forms of piracy are characterized by selling copyrighted materials for a profit, while others are characterized by peer-to-peer sharing of copyrighted material for personal use. Whether the latter is wrong or right is a topi...