Miss the latest episode of “Glee” or “The Office?” No problem, you can catch those shows on many of the available streaming video websites just hours after they have been aired. Or as has increasingly become the case, you can watch many primetime shows on sites like Hulu or network websites, which offer full free online episodes. With  free viewing comes the problem of those pesky ads, kind of like the previews when watching movies in theatres, on DVDs or Blu-rays. What if you could skip those ads or avoid buying individual tracks of entire albums on iTunes or Amazon? This is where the moral dilemma of pirating the goods becomes questionable.

In a study done by the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, an independent research firm in Denmark, people were questioned on their personal moral and ethical views on laws which they believed were socially acceptable to disobey. Among those that were studied, 70 percent found downloading illicit-pirated material from the Internet for personal use to be acceptable. Fifteen to 20 percent of people in this study found piracy perfectly acceptable. However, the caveat to this study is that three quarters of these people interviewed found it unacceptable to sell pirated material for profit.

Before the widespread availability of high-speed Internet access, opinions on piracy were different. When a similar survey was conducted in 1997, 30 percent of people believed it was socially unacceptable to illicit pirate material, which mirrors the numbers of Rockwool Foundation Research Unit’s recent survey. Companies have been doing their part which includes suing file sharers from services like BitTorrent and now defunct clients like LimeWire. The spreading of fear by companies and record labels is understandable as they are looking out for their best interest. Also, pirating has seen quite a bit of backlash from individual artists, such as Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and his war on Napster.

This also may further hit home for many,when companies with video or music on websites like YouTube remove content from their website at the request of movie and music production companies.

Piracy is also prevalent through the use of torrent and file-sharing clients. These clients cannot only be used to share and distribute copyrighted media, but can also be used to distribute media such as e-books, video games and software.

Piracy to some individuals can be more convenient as it can allow them to circumvent ads or preserve and backup copies of software they already own. The more dubious and questionable uses for piracy are obtaining and potentially hoarding large amounts of audio, video and written intellectual content.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily condemning or condoning such activity in any sense, as there are numerous sound or selfish reasons for people to feel motivated to do it, but it is something that has been at the center of Internet controversy.

What are some incentives that can be provided for people to be less likely to pirate off the Internet? One can be to offer people choices with rentals of shows and movies as is the case with iTunes and Amazon.com. This would also go over well with online e-books for devices like the Kindle, NOOK and iPad. Viewers should also have the option of getting shows earlier and ad-free if they pay a small monthly fee or a lump sum payment each year.

As a fellow poor college student, I am perfectly satisfied with just watching a TV show a day after it airs on the networks website. This allows the network to collect viewership data and ad revenue, which will keep the shows running. This also goes to pay the production staff and people behind the scenes of this show. Another model, which may bode well for fans and companies, is the “Pay What it’s Worth Model.” Artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have attempted to replicate this business strategy. I remember hearing of numerous people I know deciding to pay nothing at first, then trying out the album and deciding to pay the full $10 to $15 after fully evaluating the album. An incentive like this needs to be there to avoid pirating.

At the end of the day, access to large amounts of video and media and importantly, books open up the door to people to acquire large amounts of information. Isn’t knowledge power? In order to fix the piracy dilemma, there just needs to be incentive for people to affordably and legally obtain this knowledge and media.

Seyi Obasa is a Collegian columnist.  He can be reached at [email protected].