Video Protection And Digital Rights Management Technologies

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

I’m afraid that the issues that had to do with the rights for creators of content (authors of music, books, papers, etc.) to be able to profit from their work without being deprived of their livelihoods due to piracy, was confounded due to the ignorance of law makers about the nature of the Internet (the free flow of ideas, the ability to collaborate with people from all over the world and engage in thoughtful discourse and debate, etc.). Further, the influence of money and pressure being brought upon the government to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) by very wealthy and influential organizations (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_SOPA_and_PIPA ) created undue pressure to get Congress to act without thoughtful investigation into the

SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA: though different, these bills were all presented with a similar goal in mind. These bills were intended to stop the digital copyright infringement of American intellectual properties, mainly in foreign countries, but the overly vague wording in the bills made it hard to decipher their real intentions (Yu). For a multitude of reasons, these bills were staunchly protested not only by American citizens, but they also received protest from numerous international groups (York). Though some may argue that SOPA, PIPA, or CISPA may have had some value, they did not have the intended result of ending digital theft, but rather invigorated a retaliating movement. The main

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was a bill proposed in the House of Representatives that aimed to tackle the growing problem of online piracy and copyright infringement. It targets foreign-based websites that contain any form of unauthorized copyright-infringing material such as movies or music by giving content-creators the right to stop any US businesses from providing payment services, advertising, or even dealing with prosecuted websites; essentially blacklisting and hiding these websites to any US visitors. The bill is split into two main sections: “Combating Online Piracy”, which provides tools for rights holders to protect their content, and “Additional Enhancements to Combat Intellectual Property Theft.”, which criminal law which as applies to intellectual property rights and increases punishments for leaking government information. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was not enacted because of very strong opposing public opinion, its highly broad and unconstitutional policies that restricted speech, and presidential leadership against the bill.

Censorship is often a very touchy subject in a country where the first amendment of the constitution is to allow freedom of speech. But back in 2012, two bills dubbed SOPA and PIPA, which stand for “Stop Online Piracy Act” and “Protect IP Act” respectively, were conjured up by congress in order to make it more difficult to distribute pirated content. So of course, this doesn’t seem so harmless since pirating content is already a federal offense. However, it goes alot deeper than that. Think about a superhero movie where the superhero is fighting the villain, and in the end, the superhero defeats the villain, but the whole city is destroyed. That is exactly what SOPA and PIPA would have done, except instead of destroying one city, they would

Along with the development of a file format (MP3) to store digital audio recordings, came one of the new millennium’s most continuous debates – peer-to-peer piracy – file sharing. Internet companies such as Napster and Grokster became involved in notable legal cases in regards to copyright laws in cyberspace. These two cases are similar in nature, yet decidedly different. In order to understand the differences and similarities, one should have an understanding of each case as well as the court’s ruling.

What Sandra Schmitz was writing about was a brief review of what the Protect Internet Providers Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was about. In short, both acts would let internet providers, Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon, ect. Powers to remove certain websites from accessing certain foreign websites that are known to harbor infringing copyright content such as movies, TV shows, and music. With those overseas sites distributing this infringed content, the US government decided to try and pass certain acts like PIPA and SOPA in order to stop these certain websites to stop serving such content in their country. Schmitz explains in vast detail what PIPA and SOPA are and how they are detrimental to everyone who has access to the internet.

The Stop Online Piracy Act died when a massive groundswell of public outcry convinced a number of legislators who previously supported the bill to drop their support (O'Brien, 2012). The death of SOPA could not have come too soon. The bill was ill-conceived, and fundamentally-flawed on a number of different levels. Killing SOPA before it became law was the only logical thing to do. The companies that have come to be known collectively as "Big Content", however, are going to keep trying to dupe Congress into protecting their outmoded business model at the expense of free market capitalism and American values. Already, a new act called CISPA is working its way through Congress, containing many of the same flaws that SOPA contained (Little, 2012). It is time for Americans to stand up to Big Content and its desire to undermine America's spirit of free enterprise, and say "NO" to all of these rights-infringing bills.

The most controversial part of SOPA is its mandatory filtering of materials uploaded by users, which is considered online censorship. Early in 1998 America adopted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, know as DMCA which criminalized unauthorized copy but also created a “safe harbors”. Safe harbors explicitly protected search engines and social networks from prosecution for users’ actions. (Herman, 73) In DMCA host websites are not responsible for users’ copyright violation behaviors and if host websites move users’ illegal materials online after they received notice they will not be charged. But in SOPA these host websites are responsible for everything on their website. They need to filter information users want to express before publication to prevent copyright infringement. DCMA allows material from individuals to be published first and if any materials violate copyrights host websites will remove it but the procedures in SOPA is different. SOPA intends to prevent copyright infringement by expand the influence of copyright violation to include both users who upload illegal materials and host websites. In SOPA host websites are

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:

We all know that downloading pirated music and films is illegal, but what exactly is it? The term piracy refers to the copying and selling of music, films and other media illegally; in other words you are copying and selling copyrighted media without the permission of the original owner (NiDirect, n.d.). With the massive growth of the internet and its ability to store and capture vast amounts of data, we have become much more reliable on information systems in all aspects of life, but it does not come without the risk of information technology being used unethically. With the number of IT breakthroughs in recent years “the importance of ethics and human values has been underemphasised” often resulting in various consequences. Not surprisingly one of the many public concerns about the ethical use of IT is that “millions of people have downloaded music and movies at no charge and in apparent violation of copyright laws at tremendous expense to the owners of those copyrights” (Reynolds, Ethics in Information Technology, 2015). This essay covers the ethical issues of downloading pirated music and films and the impact it has on music corporations and recording and film companies.

With the advent of the Internet, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998 to address the obligations imposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaty. Owners of copyright were concerned that their works would be pirated online, and the existing legal systems in place at the time were insufficient to protect individuals and the industry as a whole. The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the intention of stopping copyright infringers from circumventing anti-piracy protections that have been built into copyrighted works. Specifically, the “Section 1201(a)(1) prohibits the act of circumventing a technological measure used by copyright owners to control access to their works.” Although the DMCA was intended to bolster intellectual property law, it has had a deleterious impact to the industry in the aggregate.

Producers of musical content cannot undo the adverse effects that piracy has had on the industry. Because of the internet and the way individuals have manipulated it to obtain music, many people are unwilling to change their habits. Here lies the issue between the producer and the consumer. Acts like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) work against the incentive of many consumers by telling them that they cannot do what maximizes their utility. Producers are thus working against the likings of the consumer. This is wrong.

Such policy seems to be working with plagiarism at e.g. Universities, but in term of intellectual property the intangible aspect of the product makes it more difficult to control. Therefore stopping online piracy is easier said than done, as it would require enormous human resources from a government to track down illegal websites and taking a legal action against them leading to the closure. One case study worth following regarding this issue was on the major streaming website TV SHACK.net has been seized many times by the US government and it kept changing the domain addresses to overseas addresses as .co or .bz. The owner, 23 year old student Richard O’Dwyer from Sheffield has been charged with copyright infringement and the US Justice Department has been seeking to extradite him from the UK since May 2011 – BBC reports. Streaming itself is a grey area in many countries, i.e. Germany, where it is not perceived as downloading but has been sourced using illegal means. Compared with the legal issues and the fact that the content was stored on foreign servers the law enforcement was extremely difficult, but now it has been set an example worldwide of tackling with piracy. On entering the internet address now a video clip displays which in a humoristic educated people on what piracy is and how much a “free” movie really cost. Such attempt is one of the suggested ways in dealing with piracy through

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.