Sharing copyrighted materials by using BitTorrent in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The social impact of technology has become one of the most challenging research issues. One of the most famous information technology is BitTorrent, a protocol for peer to peer file sharing. This paper discusses an ethical issue related to Peer to Peer file sharing using BitTorrent protocol of copyrighted materials. We choose an academic approach by choosing an ethical analysis tool that allows pros and cons opinions amongst different points of view. We studied this issue in Saudi community by distributing the questionnaires and analyzing its results. The result reveals that a large percentage of the participants were using Torrent to download movies and music illegally and half of them do not even realize that it is considered as illegal. Hence, it is suggested that in order to reduce the illegal use of a promising technology is to raise the awareness of the issue to the society.