TU DELFT

BEZERIANOS GEORGIOS
4326830 SATOGLOU ARETI
4325516

ETHIC POSITION
PAPER CYBER
PIRACY

Abstract
This essay analyses the moral questions that can arise when considering
cyber piracy. Cyber piracy is a controversial issue and the boundaries of
morality make it even more difficult to deal with. Advocates support that it
may be acceptable to become a cyber-pirate. Others opposed to this
belief claim that it is morally wrong to do so. So, can cyber piracy be
morally acceptable or not? We endeavor to give an answer to that
question by answering to two other relevant sub questions in accordance
with Ethics theories. It is concluded that using different theories, e.g.
Deontology or Utilitarianism, results in different outcomes as depending
on the case and the specific theory used. Therefore, sometimes cyber
piracy can be if not moral, non-unmoral and other times it is clearly
unethical.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction.................................................................................................... 3
2. Morality of cyber piracy..................................................................................4
3. Availability and price of Information...............................................................6
4. Conclusion...................................................................................................... 8
Bibliography........................................................................................................... 9

1. Introduction
Over the past years, one of the biggest threats for the software, music
and publication industry is the unauthorized creation, distribution and
usage of software, music and books. Although we can buy any type of
software or book, we are not allowed to copy or distribute it for free,
without paying the company or the person that holds the copyright or the
intellectual property rights. In other words, the world of Internet faces an
enemy, which is cyber piracy.
It is commonly argued that the uncontrolled piracy has only negative
effects. For example, in software industry according to financial issues, it
was estimated that last year alone, $20 billion were lost due to the
unauthorized duplication and distribution of various forms of software
(Vargas, 2013). Legislations and laws that protect copyrights exist but
they have not managed to diminish piracy. On the other hand, a huge
majority claims that piracy has a positive impact on the industry and
enhances their profit. It seems awkward that both contradictory points of
view can be stated in our society simultaneously. Where is the truth
hidden? Is it ethical or immoral to be a cyber-pirate or use pirated
products? When we were children, we were taught that sharing is caring
so this is considered to be a good action. But in this case, sharing data
and files that have been illegally obtained is still a good action?
This paper proposes a conceptual framework for understanding the
controversial issue of cyber piracy. The main question that derives is the
following:

Is cyber piracy morally acceptable and are its boundaries of

morality clear?
We will try to give an answer to this question by using certain theories
regarding normative ethics. More specifically, the following two subquestions will be used as pillars for our argumentation:

Are there any liable excuses that make cyber piracy ethically
acceptable and are there any situations or reasons when it can be

considered to be morally acceptable?

Should information be available to everyone, free of charge?

Our aim is to reach to an answer for our main question by answering each
of the two sub-questions.

2. Morality of cyber piracy

Are there any liable excuses that make cyber piracy ethically
acceptable and are there situations or reasons when it can be
considered to be morally acceptable?
This is a difficult normative question to answer. Suppose that someone for
various indifferent reasons becomes a cyber-pirate. In order to evaluate
his action from the perspective of the action itself, we make use of
deontological ethics or deontology (Greek: ov (deon) meaning obligation
or duty): duty ethics (Van de Poel, 2011). Specifically, according to
deontology, without taking into consideration any consequences of his
action, for instance legal issues, it can be argued that this action is
immoral as the conductor is accurately aware of the fact that he is not
allowed to become an additional coefficient to cyber piracy. Therefore, he
simply should not act so. However, if we add to the equation the reasons
and the consequences of the persons action, the results at which we can
arrive are different.
Assume that someone wants to install an anti-virus program to his
computer. The most moral scenario to accomplish that legally and
deontologically is to buy the original software. This action is completely
compatible with the Kantian theory. According to duty is a better guide for
ethics than striving for happiness. In this specific example, it can be
considered that for this person in order to be happy, the acquisition of the
anti-virus is essential. The person would be happier if he could acquire the
program and simultaneously save the amount of money that the program
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costs. That could be accomplished by downloading the program. If he acts

in this way, this person while striving for maximization of happiness
behaves unethically according to Kant. So by applying Kants theory, the
pirate is immoral. But is this the only deduction that can derive from the
application of deontology theory?
Assume that the pirate is poor and cannot afford to purchase legally the
anti-virus. Additionally, assume that the same person always wanted to go
to a university, to be educated but due to being poor he could not afford
to spend money for his education. For that reason, he downloads illegally
books and scientific documentaries in order to gain knowledge and
become self-cultivated. According to Kants categorical imperatives,
someone should act so that the maxim (a general truth or a rule of
conduct expressed in short form) may be capable of becoming a universal
law for everyone (Van de Poel, 2011). If in this case the categorical
imperative is applied then the maxim of this person can be articulated as
following: If I cannot afford to legally purchase the anti-virus, the books
and the documentaries that I need then I will download them from an
internet site for free even if that means that I will break the law. The
question is if this persons maxim could be considered as a universal law
acceptable from everyone. Specifically, if we suppose that software is
downloaded illegally from only those who cannot afford to buy the
legitimate product then nothing implies that this action was not right.
Moreover, no ones happiness is at stake. So, it can be argued that this
person did not act immorally.
A theory that is opposed to deontology is Utilitarianism. This theory states
that an action is good if it serves the maximization of human well being. In
utilitarianism, actions are judged by the amount of pleasure and pain they
bring about. The action that brings the greatest happiness for the greatest
number of people should be chosen (Van de Poel, 2011). In this occasion,
obtaining the antivirus, the books and the documentaries even by
breaking the law seems to be the only option for this person to be happy.
But if we consider the overall impact on societys happiness we can
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assume that it will not be reduced. In fact, if only this person or even all
the people that are not capable of buying the software they need to
acquire it illegitimately they will maximize their happiness while not
harming anyone. Simply they do not have the money to buy these
products, so they would never be customers of the companies that
produce them. That way the copyright holders would not loose any money
or reduce their happiness. Therefore, by applying the utilitarian theory in
this case, it is apparent that the action of pirating is not unethical but on
the contrary right to achieve maximization of happiness for a large part of
the society.
Nevertheless, there are many other possible scenarios that could occur.
One scenario is to be able to buy the program but still to decide to
download it illegally from the web. Morally different and debatable
outcomes can derive from this scenario and their differences lie on the
various excuses-reasons of the conduct of the unlawful action. To be more
concrete, assume that the conductor simply does not care that he breaks
the law (maybe believing that the possibility to be confronted with the law
and punished is minimal or maybe because his perceptions contradict the
contemporary formation of the capitalist system.) Regardless of the
reasons that lead he to be ignorant about acting illegally, according to
Kants categorical imperative, his action is immoral. His maxim would be:
I prefer to pirate over buying a product even though I can afford to pay
for the desired software because it saves me money. This is not an
argument or a reason that can defend the legal action and it could not
constitute a universal, acceptable law. By applying the utilitarian theory, it
can be claimed that if this person and others that have the same way of
thinking commit piracy then the copyright holders would lose money and
possibly would face difficulties in making new products. That way,
unemployment would rise, wages would be reduced and the overall
happiness of the society would be jeopardized. Again, pirating is
considered unethical. However, if this case is examined in the scope of
Ethical egoism, the outcome is different. Ethical egoism states that an
action of a person can be considered right as long as it satisfies his own
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needs, feelings, happiness and interests. Some advocates of ethical

egoism even claim that if everyone acts selfishly and his priority is to take
care of himself, then the world should be a better place to live in (Malm,
2011). Regarding this theory, when applied to the case above, it can be
concluded that the persons action is right as it satisfies his needs and
feelings even though he breaks the law.

3. Availability and price of Information

Should information be available to everyone, free of charge?
Nowadays Internet has facilitated accessing information, as it is not
needed to spend much money or to be a computer genius to obtain it.
When someone seeks for information he just searches to the Internet free
of charge. In other words, a person that has access to the Internet has
also access to Google and to Wikipedia and even by visiting only these
two internet sites he could enhance his knowledge and education. A large
part of our society states that everyone should have equal rights towards
obtaining information either being poor or rich. According to Trevor T.
Mooress research paper, increased personal wealth results in a natural
decline in software piracy throughout the world (Moores, 2003). More
specifically, his research showed that even in countries that piracy rates
were very high, as people become richer they have the tendency to obtain
the legal software products instead of downloading illegal copied ones. As
a result, from Deontologys perspective, the better the economic situation
of a person, the bigger the possibility for him to act morally when it comes
to cyber piracy. Nonetheless, it is plausible to think that even if a person
can afford to purchase a product legally, still he can be very tempted to
acquire the pirated one instead. This and many other reasons make it
difficult to reach to an answer when thinking if information should be free
for everyone. Opposed to this statement, one could claim that if everyone
could obtain the same information then automatically the quality of
peoples living and their tendency to contribute to their society would be
aggravated. This indicates that the overall happiness of the society would
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diminish. Therefore, from utilitarianisms perspective, to become a

pirate is immoral.
Many events can illustrate how debatable and frustrating this issue is. In
2011, under SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act),
proposed legislations that intended to strengthen protections against
copyright infringement and intellectual property theft, US Congress aimed
to prevent Internet users from accessing foreign sites with pirated content
by having service providers block those sites' domain names. Also SOPA
and PIPA threatened to punish any search engine providers, payment
network providers and Internet advertising services that continued to
support those sites. The protest against those proposed legislations got
great extent. For example, Wikipedia and Reddit, two major Internet sites
closed temporarily their contents on January 18 2012 and redirected users
to a message opposing SOPA and PIPA. Moreover, Google, Mozilla, and
Flickr featured protests against the acts and ultimately over 115,000
websites joined the Internet protest. Eventually, US Congresss attempt
failed as the proposed laws were abandoned (Magid , 2012). Moreover, in
Sweden there are 2 major pirate organizations: The Pirate Bay and the
Pirate Party. The first is a website that provides torrent files and magnet
links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing and was founded in Sweden in
2003.In 2009, the websites founders were put on trial and were found
guilty, charged with facilitating illegal downloading of copyrighted
material (Wikipedia). The second is a national political party founded in
2006. Its popularity led to the creation of parties with the same name and
similar goals in Europe and worldwide, forming the International Pirate
Party movement (Wikipedia).
This party was initially formed to reform laws regarding copyright and
patents and its agenda includes support for strengthening the individual's
right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life, and the
transparency of state administration. It managed to obtain 2 seats in the
European Parliament in the 2009 Elections, with a 7.1 % of votes.
Conclusively, we can deduct that there is no right way to answer if
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information should or should not be free for everyone as even legal issues
that arise cannot be managed easily or even adequately without
jeopardizing the happiness of various social actors. According to John
Stuart Mills freedom principle, everyone is free to strive for his/her own
pleasure, as long as they do not deny or hinder the pleasure of others
(Van de Poel, 2011). This principle emphasizes the existing difficulty to
handle and distribute information freely without provoking any unethical
issues.

4. Conclusion
Although cyber piracy is not a hot and new topic, still it remains
debatable. The fact that this issue remains unanswered for so long,
motivated us to write this paper. The purpose of this paper was to give
and an answer to the normative question: Is cyber piracy morally
acceptable and are its boundaries of morality clear? .
We tried to answer the main research question, through the usage of two
sub-questions. Various examples where taken into account in order to help
us come closer to an answer. We examined those examples under the
perspective of certain ethical theories. This process brought to the surface
the difficulty to answer the main research question. Different theories
yield different outcomes, which demonstrated the speculation about cyber
piracy.
Finally, we concluded that the case of cyber piracy is not black or white
but it lies on the gray zone. In other words, the morality of cyber piracy
depends on the incentives of the people and on the results of this action.
Thus, we cannot say that cyber piracy is ethical or not because every case
must be examined separately in order to reach a safe conclusion.

Bibliography
Wikipedia. (n.d.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Sweden)
Wikipedia. (n.d.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
Van de Poel, I. (2011). Ethics,technology and engineering: An intriduction. John
Wiley & Sons.
Vargas, M. (2013). http://courses.cs.washington.edu.
http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse490ab/01wi/490ab-papers/michaelvargas.html
Magid , L. (2012, 01 18). Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/01/18/what-are-sopa-and-pipa-andwhy-all-the-fuss/
Malm, J. (2011). Ethical reflections on Internet.
Moores, T. T. (2003, September). The effect of national culture and economic
wealth on global software piracy rates. Communications of the ACM .

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