America has been faced with a variant amount of problems throughout the U.

             The ongoing dispute over illegal Internet-based file sharing between the entertainment and software industries and the vast, online pirating community has been one of the most debated upon topics that has gripped public attention for the past decade. What was once a single public website created by a college dropout has become an empire of trafficking communities, used by hundreds of millions of people, that robs billions in revenue each year. Although these rogue websites claim to strictly serve only as hosts for illegal file sharing, the United States government must take action to eliminate Internet piracy and protect copyright by implementing digital encryption technologies and strict laws that prohibit tampering these encryptions. The trafficking of copyrighted goods must be put to an end because it promotes illegal transactions of an owner's intellectual property, causing sales in the entertainment and software industries to plummet and thereby restricts the growth of the economy.

             Internet piracy is the unlawful reproduction and/or distribution of any copyrighted digital file without the consent of the owner. It is driven by the consumers demand for a desirable product that would otherwise be unobtainable, either because of financial limitations or cultural factors, such as the Chinese culture's emphasis that the free sharing of knowledge creates and preserves both civilization and traditional values across generations (Lu 310). Consequently, such a mindset that has caused many people to believe piracy to be the solution to their individual economic problems has resulted in the slow, yet unrelenting destruction of the economy. Spearheaded by several websites hosting millions of users every day, illegal file sharing services have robbed entertainment and software companies of billions of dollars each year and have direct correlations to the current economic depression.