Abstract
The growth of Internet has numerous consequences in business and ethics, particularly in accessing information. The following report deals with music and movies based as an ethical issue. Many data sharing softwares like KaZaa, E-mule or BitTorrent, a system which is now used by millions of people worldwide to share films, give to web surfers the opportunity to enjoy watching and listening various files in a free way. But a problem arises: is it ethical to obtain cultural files without paying them? To what extent is it considered as a right attitude? Are we stealing when we download files in such a way? How to know if the files (music, movie and different kinds of software) you download are illegal and so belong to an Intellectual Property? Record companies and artists are the first actors affected by this conduct and charge downloaders of being the cause of substantial financial losses. According to the 2006 Piracy Report provided by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the trade of pirate discs was worth US $4.5 billion globally in 2005. At the same time, almost 20 billion tracks were illegally swapped or downloaded on the internet in 2005.
