FILE SHARINGEthical debate with today's technology(INTRO)You may have illegal content on your computer right now! File sharing has become a very important problem in society today even though it has existed for decades. It is the recent advancements in our technology that have brought it popular and into the eyes of the general public. File sharing today tests the limits of technology as well as our ethics, making it a fuzzy gray area. When discussing the effect of file sharing on society, you must first have a brief understanding of the terminology, technology, and methods used. File sharing in its simplest form refers to “anything that allows the exchange of files (audio, graphics, animations, etc.) between users over a network”. The distribution of file sharing can be grouped into two basic categories, physical and virtual. invention of the cassette, in 1962 (about.com), people transferred data. Friends would copy a tape they borrowed or bought from another friend and the chain would never end. When camcorders began to become smaller and more affordable, films were pirated from theaters and sold. Today's technology has changed tremendously, but we still find ourselves falling into the same sharing habits. Friends can now burn CDs in 5 minutes and DVDs in an hour. The only thing that has changed is the ability to protect media using encryption keys, watermarks, and other digital rights management (DRM) systems that prevent media from being copied. The overall effect of this situation is that the average person is left with the headache of not being able to do what they want with their own media, while the hacker continues to hack and bypass security measures. The biggest contributor to file sharing these days is software. using virtual media. Before, with virtual media, the only way to get something was if someone you knew had it. Now, thanks to the power of the web, a user can find what they want from anyone in the world. The Internet is probably the most basic form of using websites and emails. One of the first forms of sharing came from Internet Chat Relay (IRC), which is still used today. The initial use of IRC was for chatting, but users realized that files could be stored on the servers hosting...... middle of paper ...... files come from other computers Americans. A legal strategy focused primarily on the United States is unlikely to change the supply of music files. “Previous studies have used surveys to assess the effect of file sharing on music sales. This is problematic because it is impossible to know whether survey participants are truthfully answering questions about illegal activity. This study is unique in that it uses data from file sharing servers, where the authors directly observed 1.75 million downloads over 17 weeks in the fall of 2002. Using statistical methods, they can then test whether the sale of an album decreases more sharply if the album is downloaded more often. »(CONCLUSION) So even with the pros/cons, copyright laws, ethics and facts; Is file sharing an illegal crime, and one that deserves the harsh penalties of these serious crimes? Is it unethical to give a friend a copy of their favorite CD? Give something of yourself? Is file sharing an illegal violation..