Can I share with you? - New Concept of Property

There is an old saying that time is like a shot arrow. That is really right. It has been almost three and a half months since I arrived in America. I have set a lot of goals here. Among all things, the most important goal is to improve my English skill. As a way to enhance my listening skill, I started to watch American dramas on TV. A friend in America advised me of contracting cable TV services to be immersed in American culture. It would provide a lot of interesting channels. Consequently, I would get a lot of experiences in a second hand. Furthermore, funny and exciting American soap operas would not allow me to be bored. Nevertheless, instead of getting cable TV services, I decided to watch on computer as it is cheaper than cable services.

After making a decision to enjoy dramas on my computer, I asked my Korean friend in Austin how I can get drama file. Usually in Korea, I could find a few friends around me who I already get a newly released movie or mp3 file. As a result, several friends around them asked the owners to share the file. Even though I did not watch Korean soap dramas on computer in Korea, it looked like a good information sharing between friends.

Actually, I expected a positive answer from the friend in Austin like “you can get them from some sites or I can share the file.” However, the answer was so unexpected thing. She said that I could just watch the drama posted for free by the producer or some excerpts for advertising. She continued to tell me that if I got the clips illegally, I would be expelled from the school or institution I attended. I felt shocked because sharing download clips seemed very prevalent in Korea even though it could mean some violation of other people's property. I already knew about how bad illegal download of intellectual property was, but I could witness those sharing frequently in Korea. Although Korea tried to regulate illegal violence of intellectual property like software download, a lot of young people successfully found their way to access newly-released clips just to not paying for fee and closed their eyes in front of other people’s violation of their properties; however, in America, illegal software download had been already prohibited seriously even before. It was considered a stealing.

I thought the law of the protection of intellectual property should be reinforced more to avoid taking place again. The reason why it should be prohibited is so clear that nobody could rebut it. I think that protecting the property is a basic appointment for society to be better place to live in the future. Violating the property is the same as just stealing. I will pay for English soap video files or mp3 files happily.