EMERGENCE
THE HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE OF INTERNET PIRACY
(Pirate Flag, 2007)
History
This section will inform you of where this issue started and where it has gone and what are the continuing struggles and advances regarding this issue today.
Internet piracy's earliest mark on society and the economy was music sharing over the internet. It's when Shawn Fanning created napster in 1998 that internet piracy became something to talk about. Napster was the first mainstream user-friendly P2P computer soft ware. P2P (peer-to-peer) software is peer sharing software that allows users to connect with one another and swap copyrighted material. (Bender, 2009) At Napster's peak it had an estimated 25 million and 80 million songs! The affect of Napster and other online P2P sites was attributed to the sudden loss in music revenues in the United States. Napster had several law suits filled against it by different music artists but then had to close because of a large law suit filled against it by several companies from the recording industry using the Digital Millenium Act in 2001. (Online Piracy, n.d.)
Although Napster was taken down by law suits many P2P programs still exist most focussing on the BitTorrent protocol which became popular in 2003 (Danaher, 2014, p. 36-37). Today many different websites continue to feed the fire of internet digital piracy in regards to both music, movies and software.
The Movie Industry
When looking at the internet movie piracy it is important to consider the differences between movie piracy and music piracy. As stated above, music piracy emerged early. This is mainly because movie files tend to be much larger than music files making them more difficult to store and download. Check out this Dnews video to the right about the difference between movie pirates and music pirates.
Connivence
Notice near the end of this video the hostess talks about how convenience plays a big role in movie piracy and piracy in general. Consider the amount of computers in the past five years that come with a CD and DVD burner and basic software that is capable of copying and burning a CD or DVD. Even further to this point the emergence of the MP3 player has made the CD player obsolete and turned the music industry into a very digital industry. The expansion of technology has aided the growth and explosion of digital piracy and made it extremely convenient for more and more people (bender). The music and movie industry has been forced to adapt to the emergence of technology and piracy, one example would be online media stores like iTunes or Google Play.
Should it be stopped?
As stated earlier in this website, internet piracy is 100% illegal and therefore should be stopped. Or should it? There are many people in and outside the industries affected by internet piracy that believe it is something that should be embraced rather than stopped. Watch the second Dnews video on the right to get an idea how hard it is to stop internet piracy.
So it's hard.... because the internet is such a wide space, if you stop one website from encouraging copyright infringement, another will pop up. Danaher (2014) has proved through examining trusted texts that piracy has hurt both the movie and music industry and affected revenues. Just like this Dnews video mentions around the 2:00 minute mark, the music industry recorded an 8 billion dollar decrease between 1999 and 2009. Therefore it seems like piracy should be stopped at all costs to save the recording industry and value of music.
Embrace It
Here is a video by a Australian film maker that presents an idea of embracing piracy rather than trying to defend it. I think this video makes a really authentic point because of the amount of musicians in the video speaking out against piracy. Many music artists find the internet an amazing way to get their music out to their listeners and to find new listeners. So then their money is made off fans who will buy their music because they loved the few tracks that they were able to get free.
Piracy today in Canada
Although it seems that fighting piracy is not worth the time of copyright holders and governments of the world, the Canadian government's "Copyright Modernization Act" took full effect earlier in 2015. Internet Service Providers (Such as Rogers, Bell and Shaw) and website hosts are now mandated to inform their users if a copyright holder has caught them illegally downloading their copyrighted content. This doesn't change the piracy game to much, but it informs users that someone is following their internet downloads and may file a law suit if the pattern continues. According to the interview video on the ctv website (link here), this may only stop the "novice" pirates of the internet. Pirates who are committing copyright infringement for profit are doing so with software such as proxy servers that hides their IP address which is a way to find the users pirating illegal material. This may not stop piracy but it may slow down the amount of illegally downloaded material in Canada. (Illegal downloaders beware, 2015)