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The spread of illegal filesharing of copyrighted mate-rial has been a polarizing issue fromlegal, philosophical, and economic per-spectives, with strong opinions emerging both for and against Internet media piracy.

However, the vast majority do not see online file-sharing as a big threat to creative industries. Across the board, artists and musicians are more likely to say that the internet has made it possible for them to make more money from their art than they are to say it has made it harder to protect their work from piracy or unlawful use. 52% of all artists and 55% of Paid Artists believe it should be illegal for internet users to share unauthorized copies of music and movies over file-sharing networks, compared to 37% of all artists and 35% of Paid Artists who say it should be legal.

The digitization of media goods effectively weakened copyright laws across the globe by making it easy for ordinary consumers to illegally share media files from computer to computer. Many industry observers have called for reform of existing copyright policy to address issues particular to digitization, and governments have tried a variety of policies to mitigate the impact piracy has had on sales.