Essay about Battling Digital Piracy

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

Piracy has always been an issue for intellectual property owners. Piracy existed even as early as the 1500’s. In one famous instance, Renaissance artist Marcantonio Raimondi copied some of Albrecht Dürer’s works and claimed it was his own (Gambino, 2011). Politicians and content creators try to combat piracy with laws and lawsuits, but people engaging in piracy remain active and elusive. However, the development of the Internet has exacerbated this issue. Technological advancements, specifically the advancements in file sharing, have made the exchange of information extremely inexpensive, quick, and easy. People have direct access to unauthorized copies of millions of movies and songs due to programs such as Napster and Limewire. Thus, illegal

Signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "was the foundation of an effort by Congress to implement United States treaty obligations and to move the nation's copyright law into the digital age." ("Executive Summary DMCA Report") While this seems a valid description of the law, perhaps a more accurate interpretation lies in the following statement: "The DMCA is a piece of legislation rushed through Congress by the entertainment industry lobbyists to protect its monopoly on commercially-developed digital content, cartels, price-fixing, and to maintain its status quo as the single entity that can direct what should be 'popular' or 'used' by

In the global market that we leave in companies are trying to find any and everyway that they can to get ahead in their respective markets. This most of the time brings out the most innovate thinkers that can come up with a way to keep it’s company on top of their market and sometimes we see that there are companies that like to take a short cut by using non legal and malicious methods. According to Lewis, (1985), Software piracy is the illicit copying of the operating instructions and applications programs, which make computers work, is a large and growing industry. The Pirate Bay is part of a European social and political movement that opposes copyrighted content and demands that music, videos, TV shows, and other digital content be free and unrestricted. In the words of the Pirate Party, “the Pirate Bay is a unique platform for distributing culture between regular people and independent artists, and that’s something we want to preserve.”

Internet piracy is a hot-button topic, but it is not one that we should take lightly. We as a nation need to quell the distribution of these stolen materials. Imagine if someone pirated teaching videos online to learn for free? Then what would happen to teachers? Where would we be without libraries and their indispensable resources? The days of Blackbeard may be gone, but if we, as a nation, fail to take action, well, we are in for some stormy

Today’s digital knowledge has made it so easy to perform copyright infringement in order to create pirated movies. This in turn has increased the amount of illegal digital movie distribution. It’s so easy these days to make perfect copies and then distribute it across global networks. Torrent Freak research shows multiple copies of movies that are found online. Technology has made it more tempting than ever to violate the copyright laws without breaking a sweat. Majority of Internet users think that if it is on the Internet, it's free. But they don’t realize that even public display of someone’s work without proper permission is considered Copyright infringement. Displaying it on a website, putting it on film or transmitting it to the public in any other way are all examples of how movies are facing piracy issues daily. In spite of that piracy continues to grow at an exponential speed. Moreover, movies that deal with copyright infringement has grown over the years.

There are many forms of digital content. All of them can be stolen and this is illegal as is any other form of stealing. Digital piracy is the sharing and downloading digital content illegally. The problem with digital piracy has been around for over 20 years, however due to many factors such as the recession and the increasing development of technology the problem is becoming increasing difficult to manage (QUIGLEY, 2008). However the ability to buy the content online has boosted the profit for many creators of digital content.

Online piracy doesn’t only necessarily harm the music industry but harms other industries that are available in an economy, such as the movie industry. For instance, in the years of 2009 and 2010, a research study showed an estimate of 12,600 jobs and $1.8 billion were lost throughout the entire Canadian economy due to the piracy of movies let alone piracy of other content (source). The physical recorded music worldwide was exceling in the 1990’s, having profits as high as $37 billion in 1999 however that number significantly drops to $25 billion by 2007. Several organizations agreed that the drastic decrease in revenue not solely in Canada but worldwide, is due to online piracy. It has caused songwriters lose their jobs and staying without works and is demotivating new artists into the industry since it is a much harder process now to get signed into the business now. Furthermore, the technological change that keep occurring has reduced how effective the degree of protection that copyright laws have ever since

Imagine a musician who put their heart and soul into creating music that they can share with the whole world. He goes through the entire process of uploading his song onto ITunes. Except when he is done it appears that no one is buying his music. Everyone is buying his music for free off a piracy website called BitTorrent. Now he won’t be able to earn his money and he can’t get the official recognition he needs to become a top artist. Thousands of people are illegally downloading content of the internet. Websites like BitTorrent harbor and allow these people to basically steal other people’s work. This doesn’t only apply to the music industry though. Movie industry, software industries, and video games industries are getting hit from online piracy. One of the way industries compensate for their loses from piracy is by raising their prices for people who don’t download illegally. Which will lead

In the year of 2005, there totaled 147 case files in the area of intellectual property crimes. (Weier) This number has risen exponentially throughout the 21st century, as more and more productions move to the realm of cyberspace. Hearing a coworker or peer bragging about illegally downloading films or music appears to be more common in the year 2016. The sudden advancement of technology appears to perpetuate a sense of virtual comfort in theft. Further, pro-piracy groups paint an argument that piracy composes very little potential to affect others negatively. Unfortunately, the resulting apathy cannot be easily targeted or terminated. End users may not have the experience or may simply not care much, as long as they possess the ability to easily get away with piracy. Laws should be pushed onto internet service providers in the case of formatting a response to suspicious client-server network traffic. The solution would be configured to allow privacy, while restricting the use of torrent sites that condone the distribution of illegal

In response to this “epidemic of illegal file sharing” (RIAA 2003a), on June 26, 2003, RIAA redirected legal threats toward individual subscribers of these networks who, in the past, enjoyed anonymity in P2P environments. Prior to RIAA’s recent legal efforts, individual file sharers were almost completely immune from legal liability when violating copyright law. These recent legal developments have considerably altered that perceived notion (Graham 2003; Lichtman 2003). Owing to the impracticality of filing lawsuits against every individual file sharer, RIAA has chosen to focus on a relatively small group of individuals and maximize the publicity surrounding its legal action to discourage the overall participation in file‐sharing networks.

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

As the success of services like Hulu and Netflix suggests, consumers are only too happy to pay for content that 's made available in a convenient form, and at a reasonable price. If the content industries want a genuinely effective way to reduce global piracy, they should spend less time and money lobbying for new regulations, and focus on providing innovative services that make piracy unattractive. [5]

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This

Companies like Apple, have decided that it is best to get in with the downloading business. However, an end to the illegal downloading conflict remains to be realized. The RIAA and associated artists continue to wage war against illegal downloaders while computer savvy audiences persist in sharing music files online every day. While it is undoubtedly true that downloading music is a crime, it remains to be proven that it is wrong. Without establishing this principle, most downloader's are likely to continue the activity. Even with new, inexpensive and available means of downloading files, they can still be shared for free online. The rift must be repaired between music lovers who feel that they have been taken advantage of in the past and recording companies and artists who worry about their future livelihood.