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The Impact Of Piracy On A Digital Platform

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In 2013, game development company, Greenheart Games, released their game, Game Dev Tycoon, alongside a cracked version of it “on the number one torrent sharing site.” This revealed that within a day of the game release, 93.6% of users playing their game were using the cracked version that they uploaded” (Klug). These stats are terrifying when trying to make a successful business on a digital platform. Seeing that a majority of industries make some revenue off the internet, piracy is something that must decrease in order for more businesses to make a profit on this relatively new platform. Piracy has been a concern for much longer than the internet as “[i]nventions such as the photocopier, CD burners, and the Internet has made the copying of books, music, and movies inexpensive and easy and the enforcement of copyright more difficult” (Adermon). This has only increased due to the accessibility of the internet. In order to decrease piracy, one must first understand why it happens in the first place. The main reasons for people to resort to piracy rather than the legitimate acquisition of products is that piracy is free, piracy is more convenient, and piracy is anonymous. There are many ways to try to counteract these positives of pirating, but with such a large number of pirated digital goods, how is it even possible to lower the effects of piracy?
The first thought many politicians have when entering the internet piracy debate, is why not ban all illegal streaming and

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