I have actually never illegally downloaded anything intentionally, and now I say intentionally because this one time when I was 16 I tried buying a karaoke version of “all that jazz” off this obscure website and accidently imported it into my downloads. But other than that my whole life has been following the rules of the copyright industry. As should yours.

Now when we think about pirating any form of entertainment we don’t really think about how it is harming the industry that the product was created by. We just want our music and we want it now. Or we just want to watch the newest released movie without having to pay upwards of $12. Well I can tell you that 25% of Americans illegally download music. And that $12 billion dollars are lost to piracy each year. 70,000 jobs are lost and that piracy websites are visited 53 billion times a year.

We’ve all seen this at the beginning of a movie during the previews. And now this specific warning is for those looking to sneak in a camera to record the movie they're viewing, and then upload it to the internet on an illegal pirated website.

Now one of the biggest arguments against illegally downloading music is the concept of intellectual property.

in·tel·lec·tu·al prop·er·ty

noun

1. a work or invention that is the result of creativity, such as a manuscript or a design, to which one has rights and for which one may apply for a patent, copyright, trademark, etc.

Here’s a case from just about 2 years ago from an article titled “Yes, Movie Piracy is a form of Intellectual Property Theft”

“Philip Danks, a 25 year old man from Walsall, England, received a 33 month sentence for making and distributing a pirated copy of Fast and Furious 6. Danks is credited as being the first to pirate a copy of the movie, filming from the back of the theater on its opening day, May 17. Danks’ copy of the movie would be downloaded more than 779,000 times over the course of the next month, costing Universal Pictures, the film’s distributor, an estimated $4 million in revenue. His copy of the film caught the eye of a “webwatch” team created by Universal to track any piracy related to the highly anticipated film.”

Now I know 33 months is a long time to go to jail for making a copy of a movie and putting it online. So let's put it another way.

When you think about the people who are losing out on the money from piracy you think of famous stars such as Lil Wayne, Mac Miller, or Tyga. But the problem that leads a lot of people to the idea that their illegal download isn’t affecting the artist is because of how rich they are. The illegal downloading is hurting people like you and me. People who work behind the scenes producing the music. The lawyers and managers of the companies that create music videos, movies, music; they are the ones that suffer. The big guys will be getting their money in the long run, the little guys on the bottom will be the ones feeling the trickle down effect.

A real life example of this effect, has everyone hear heard about the movie “Sausage Party”. You know that movie everyone was talking about all summer. Well you see the issue I have with this movie is that it only had a budget of 19 million dollars. And yes 19 million is a lot of money but not for a movie of this caliber. A dozen animators on the film quit during the process because of the stress they were put under. They were not paid overtime for their work, even though they were expected to stay late into the night to make deadlines. Close to half of the animators weren’t given credit for their contributions to the movie while being told that they would be ruined in the entertainment industry if they quit.

These are the types of work environments we are creating by not paying the industry what it deserves. As time goes on more people are going to be accessible to free copies of entertainment and that only hurts the industry.

When you illegally download music, movies, television and more, you're committing a crime. Whether is be someone's intellectual property or a recording of a movie from a movie theatre, privacy is a chargeable crime that hurts not only the artists, but everyone involved and you should be able to go to jail for that.