A Letter From Teen Coalition For Digital Freedom

Enriquez, Gabby

Mr. Dinh

Language Arts 11th Grade

3 September 2015

To Whom It May Concern:

Hello, my name is Gabby Enriquez, representing from Teen Coalition for Digital Freedom. I'm writing to you about the topic of Internet piracy. Internet piracy has been around as early as 1999 and has been growing bigger and bigger ever since. Recently this crime has become so large, that people in government positions are debating whether to persecute individuals who commit this offense. Research proves that prosecution should be enforced to whomever commits the felony of Internet piracy. The reasons include loss of money and loss of jobs. Which in all perspective hurts the economy overall. If people aren't buying, the economy will ultimately suffer

In the article, “SOPA, controversial online piracy bill, gains support as lobbying intensifies” by Cecilia Kang reports that, “ ‘The problem of rogue Web sites is real, immediate and widespread. It harms all sectors of the economy,’ Smith said during the hearing.”(Source 1) In other words illegal downloading websites are everywhere around the world and causing the same harmful problem, the problem regarding the significant lose of money to the economy. And when the economy performs poorly, this ripples all the way down to the workers of these industries. When businesses all of a sudden start losing money, businesses can’t afford to pay all the employees that work for them. Kang also writes, “ ‘Fundamentally, this is about jobs,’ said Michael O’Leary, who represented the Motion Picture Association of America at the hearing.”(Source 1) To put it in another way, the basis of why people- similar to Michael O’ Leary- think that individuals should be persecuted for committing Internet piracy, is simply because of the loss of jobs. When people lose jobs there is an increase of the poor and homeless. This clearly demonstrates a main consequence that Internet piracy should be