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Many won't even read this, but I am going to post it anyway. I wrote this in 2009 so some of it may even be outdated right now. I figure with SOPA/PIPA still on the brain of everyone from the media to Joe Blow internet user, I thought I would share. That, and I was damn proud of this paper since it made the front page of the school newspaper.
__________________________________________________________________
“The RIAA sees the face of evil and it’s a twelve year old girl†(Vance 2003). This may seem like an outlandish headline, though it is very much true. In 2003 Brianna Lahara a twelve year old honor student was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement, and she is just one of the hundreds. Brianna had no idea what she was doing was wrong; she was using KaZaA, a service her mother had paid $29.99 for (2003). KaZaA, a peer to peer (P2P) file sharing program hosted hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and software. Brianna thought what she was doing was fine and continued to download song after song; however, ignorance to a law does not give anyone a free pass to break the law. Digital copyright infringement is even now still in its infancy and until file sharing can be regulated this will be a losing battle for the RIAA.
Webster’s Dictionary defines piracy as the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright. Piracy is nothing new to anyone in the world. We used to think of pirates as people on the high seas looting other ships, wearing an eye patch and having a peg leg. This however is not the case anymore, most often it is the digital piracy that is being fought by the RIAA, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), and the BSA (Business Software Alliance). It could be anyone from a seven year old child to a ninety year old grandmother with a computer and knowledge of where to download music. Piracy can be as easy as going to your favorite website and downloading a tune that is listed for free since many websites have songs available for download. A quick Google search can yield millions of sites that offer pirated media. Many of these sites that attract pirates label themselves with keywords such as warez, crackz and haxx, just to name a few. These sites are often well known for having malicious content along with spyware and viruses. This might be worth the risk to some people looking for a rare song, movie or CD. Piracy isn’t just done by downloading, it can also be achieved using the direct disk copy method. Whether it is copied to another media disk or to the hard drive of your computer, copying the digital content is as easy as the push of a button. Even with copy protection on the CD’s that come out now, there are ways around it and it doesn’t take long for someone to exploit and share it with the rest of the online community.
The first big case that most people have heard about in the fight against piracy was the RIAA vs. Napster. Napster is an online service that allows computer users to share high-quality digital copies (MP3s) of music recordings via the Internet. Barely a year after the launch of Napster it was sued by the RIAA claiming Napster’s service violated copyright laws. The RIAA sued on behalf of recording artists for damages and lost revenue by allowing free trading among the many users. Napster had claimed it was legal to do what they were doing because people could download music for their own personal use and not distribute it to make a profit. Napster is a pioneer in P2P file sharing as it was the first big one on the internet scene. Now, there are file sharing programs popping up just as fast as they are shut down, with most located overseas where the RIAA cannot touch them.
With the advancement of technology, piracy of music and movies is as easy as a click of a button. Even 20 years ago piracy existed but it was nowhere near as easy. If you had a cassette tape player or a VCR you could easily reproduce a cassette tape. With the right equipment you could mass produce these cassettes; you would lose a lot of quality however, whether it was the sound on a cassette tape or the picture quality and sound on a VHS tape. Now that both music and movies are produced digitally, downloading and burning them is incredibly easy and you do not lose much quality, if any. CD and DVD recorders along with their compatible media are available for anyone to purchase at any retail store like Wal-Mart, Target, or ShopKo for a reasonable price.
The RIAA now has the odds stacked against them. With internet speeds now faster than once was thought possible, downloading a file can be done in a matter of seconds rather than a matter of minutes or even hours. Now with sites offering higher quality files that are compressed into smaller and easier to download files, piracy is even easier. Some of the more popular websites offer torrents. A torrent is a small file that initiates a download between a user’s computer and other computers that host the file, much like the P2P programs of years ago.
2009 saw one of the biggest sites get sued by the RIAA. The Pirate Bay, a popular torrent site for music, movies, and software was taken to court for illegal file sharing (Stone, Lerner 2009). Peter Danowsky who represented the music companies said after extensive investigation following police action, “The Pirate Bay was aiding and abetting the extensive infringement of copyright.†Danowsky said the activities affected the legitimate sales of CDs and online recordings as well as the ability to develop new online sales. Many of the recordings were made available for download before the release of the CD which also hurt the sale of the recordings. For example, popular rap icon Eminem moved up the release of his CD after a copy was leaked online a month ahead of the release date.
X-Men Origins Wolverine was leaked online a month before the film opened in theaters, giving fans a chance to see the movie for free. The movie had yet to be finished with none of the CGI done, but it was a small price to pay to see it in the comfort of your own home. Twentieth Century Fox downplayed the movie getting released online saying that it was not the final version of the film (Duke 2009). The movie on opening weekend made $87 million, and throughout the run in theaters made a total of $373,062,569 million. It is difficult to say if the movie would have done better had it not been leaked online a month before the official release date. Earlier this year the Australian industry body MIPI (Movie Industry Pirate Investigation) made an arrest of the woman responsible for leaking the movie. They picked her up outside a pub in Wetherhill Park. In her car nearby they found 600 pirated films and music. The arrest proved to be substantial, as investigation into the discs led to a lab that could produce up to 378,000 discs a year with a street value of $1.8 million (Tindal 2009). Neil Gane the director of AFACT (The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) said, “That pirated copies of X-Men Origins: Wolverine were found among the haul is especially disappointing. The film was made in Australia, employed over one thousand Australians, engaged over one hundred Australian companies and contributed over $80 million to the local economy. The flagrant sales of pirated copies of the film is a slap in the face to the hard work and creativity that so many Australians put into the movie.â€
Many movies are online just hours after opening in theaters. These are usually poor quality movies recorded with a camcorder, but if you want to watch the movie without paying the money to go to the theater this is the easiest way. You lose the quality of the movie but you still see it for free. This leads to companies not keeping movies in theaters as long as they used to. Now movies spend less than a month in theaters before they are gone. The DVD release is usually out just a few months after the theater release, which creates another problem. DVD movies are leaked anywhere from one to two months before the release date of the DVD. The Transformers 2 DVD was leaked online one month before the release of the DVD itself.
During a hearing in Los Angeles, director Steven Soderbergh said in 2007 the industry brought in over $13.7 billion dollars, imagine what those totals could have been if piracy was reigned in (France 2009). Bootlegs and illegally copied movies have long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. In 2003, The Hulk was leaked online two weeks before the film opened. The man responsible for the theft pled guilty to stealing and distributing it online. In 2005, a copy of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was online mere hours after the opening. Today’s pirates are much more sophisticated and getting better quality equipment with which to distribute illegal movies. Greg Sandoval, who covers media and digital entertainment for CNET news, says that in the digital age, thieves can gain access to near-perfect advance copies of films on DVD; this gives a greater potential to undermine a movie's box-office prospects. Even studios who try to safeguard the movies by watermarking them for easier tracking is not enough since pirates have figured out how to remove the watermark from the copies. "When you're talking about digital content ... it's impossible to lock it down completely" from theft, Sandoval said. "These hackers are very creative. Sometimes, they're one step ahead of the security experts."
Independent filmmakers are sometimes happy with their work being pirated and released on torrents, as is the case with two such independent filmmakers, Jamin Winans and Kiowa Winans. They are happy and grateful for pirates copying their movie “Ink†and distributing it on torrent sites. Within days of being ripped and shared online their little movie gained a sudden leap on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and jumped up over 81 percent in popularity. That is a pretty staggering jump in popularity for a movie that not too many people had heard of. Jamin and Kiowa sent an email to their company’s newsletter explaining what had happened and thanking fans. In it, they had stated they knew it would be ripped off and became the number one downloaded movie on torrent sites, being downloaded 150,000 to 200,000 times; as a result it is ranked number sixteen on IMDb’s movie meter and in the top twenty of most popular movies in the world. This does not prove that piracy is good, yet it is one example of how the attitude of some filmmakers take piracy in stride (Ponto 2009).
Windows 7 is a good indication of how the piracy of software is on the rise. A complete copy of Windows 7 Ultimate was on torrent sites almost two months before the October 22 release date of the software. It was a full version of the operating system complete with a key generator that validated the copy when it was run. But this is just one of the software programs that are available for download. Microsoft Office is one of the largest software programs pirated, and that is due mainly to the price of the software. A small shop in Hong Kong hardly looked like a pirate’s den, but that is exactly what it was. Jimmy Leung was selling pirated programs out of the shop (Kelliher D-2). “I can get the software one month after it is released in the U.S.†says Leung. “This business program,†says Leung pointing at five discs, “would cost you $500 in the United States and I sell it for 50 Hong Kong dollars.†That amounts to $6.50 in the U.S. It takes less than ten seconds to copy from a master disc to a blank disc using a dual disc drive. And this was in 1986.
Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative (GSI) focuses the company’s activities and investments toward combating software piracy into a single initiative. The initiative will focus on three key components, which are education, engineering, and enforcement. The best way Microsoft aims to stop the piracy and protect the consumer is by education. Microsoft is also working with the industry to make consumers aware of the risks associated with downloading and using pirated software. They may be more prone to identity theft, spyware and viruses; they will not receive critical software updates that are provided by the companies. For example Microsoft XP counterfeit users will not be able to download the newest versions of Windows Media Player or any premium add-ons. Microsoft encourages customers to use Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) to make sure they are not a victim of counterfeiting.
Billions of dollars are lost every year because of piracy. But is piracy truly as bad as the media organizations would lead us to believe? Probably not. There is compelling data suggesting digital piracy having little to no effect on overall sales when compared to the state of the economy and the quality of the media. The recording industry once stated the copying of cassette tapes would destroy the music industry. The television industry also once stated VCRs in every home would destroy network broadcasting. Both entertainment industries see billion dollar revenue annually to this day. Apparently their claims about piracy are a bit exaggerated.
__________________________________________________________________
“The RIAA sees the face of evil and it’s a twelve year old girl†(Vance 2003). This may seem like an outlandish headline, though it is very much true. In 2003 Brianna Lahara a twelve year old honor student was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement, and she is just one of the hundreds. Brianna had no idea what she was doing was wrong; she was using KaZaA, a service her mother had paid $29.99 for (2003). KaZaA, a peer to peer (P2P) file sharing program hosted hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and software. Brianna thought what she was doing was fine and continued to download song after song; however, ignorance to a law does not give anyone a free pass to break the law. Digital copyright infringement is even now still in its infancy and until file sharing can be regulated this will be a losing battle for the RIAA.
Webster’s Dictionary defines piracy as the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright. Piracy is nothing new to anyone in the world. We used to think of pirates as people on the high seas looting other ships, wearing an eye patch and having a peg leg. This however is not the case anymore, most often it is the digital piracy that is being fought by the RIAA, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), and the BSA (Business Software Alliance). It could be anyone from a seven year old child to a ninety year old grandmother with a computer and knowledge of where to download music. Piracy can be as easy as going to your favorite website and downloading a tune that is listed for free since many websites have songs available for download. A quick Google search can yield millions of sites that offer pirated media. Many of these sites that attract pirates label themselves with keywords such as warez, crackz and haxx, just to name a few. These sites are often well known for having malicious content along with spyware and viruses. This might be worth the risk to some people looking for a rare song, movie or CD. Piracy isn’t just done by downloading, it can also be achieved using the direct disk copy method. Whether it is copied to another media disk or to the hard drive of your computer, copying the digital content is as easy as the push of a button. Even with copy protection on the CD’s that come out now, there are ways around it and it doesn’t take long for someone to exploit and share it with the rest of the online community.
The first big case that most people have heard about in the fight against piracy was the RIAA vs. Napster. Napster is an online service that allows computer users to share high-quality digital copies (MP3s) of music recordings via the Internet. Barely a year after the launch of Napster it was sued by the RIAA claiming Napster’s service violated copyright laws. The RIAA sued on behalf of recording artists for damages and lost revenue by allowing free trading among the many users. Napster had claimed it was legal to do what they were doing because people could download music for their own personal use and not distribute it to make a profit. Napster is a pioneer in P2P file sharing as it was the first big one on the internet scene. Now, there are file sharing programs popping up just as fast as they are shut down, with most located overseas where the RIAA cannot touch them.
With the advancement of technology, piracy of music and movies is as easy as a click of a button. Even 20 years ago piracy existed but it was nowhere near as easy. If you had a cassette tape player or a VCR you could easily reproduce a cassette tape. With the right equipment you could mass produce these cassettes; you would lose a lot of quality however, whether it was the sound on a cassette tape or the picture quality and sound on a VHS tape. Now that both music and movies are produced digitally, downloading and burning them is incredibly easy and you do not lose much quality, if any. CD and DVD recorders along with their compatible media are available for anyone to purchase at any retail store like Wal-Mart, Target, or ShopKo for a reasonable price.
The RIAA now has the odds stacked against them. With internet speeds now faster than once was thought possible, downloading a file can be done in a matter of seconds rather than a matter of minutes or even hours. Now with sites offering higher quality files that are compressed into smaller and easier to download files, piracy is even easier. Some of the more popular websites offer torrents. A torrent is a small file that initiates a download between a user’s computer and other computers that host the file, much like the P2P programs of years ago.
2009 saw one of the biggest sites get sued by the RIAA. The Pirate Bay, a popular torrent site for music, movies, and software was taken to court for illegal file sharing (Stone, Lerner 2009). Peter Danowsky who represented the music companies said after extensive investigation following police action, “The Pirate Bay was aiding and abetting the extensive infringement of copyright.†Danowsky said the activities affected the legitimate sales of CDs and online recordings as well as the ability to develop new online sales. Many of the recordings were made available for download before the release of the CD which also hurt the sale of the recordings. For example, popular rap icon Eminem moved up the release of his CD after a copy was leaked online a month ahead of the release date.
X-Men Origins Wolverine was leaked online a month before the film opened in theaters, giving fans a chance to see the movie for free. The movie had yet to be finished with none of the CGI done, but it was a small price to pay to see it in the comfort of your own home. Twentieth Century Fox downplayed the movie getting released online saying that it was not the final version of the film (Duke 2009). The movie on opening weekend made $87 million, and throughout the run in theaters made a total of $373,062,569 million. It is difficult to say if the movie would have done better had it not been leaked online a month before the official release date. Earlier this year the Australian industry body MIPI (Movie Industry Pirate Investigation) made an arrest of the woman responsible for leaking the movie. They picked her up outside a pub in Wetherhill Park. In her car nearby they found 600 pirated films and music. The arrest proved to be substantial, as investigation into the discs led to a lab that could produce up to 378,000 discs a year with a street value of $1.8 million (Tindal 2009). Neil Gane the director of AFACT (The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) said, “That pirated copies of X-Men Origins: Wolverine were found among the haul is especially disappointing. The film was made in Australia, employed over one thousand Australians, engaged over one hundred Australian companies and contributed over $80 million to the local economy. The flagrant sales of pirated copies of the film is a slap in the face to the hard work and creativity that so many Australians put into the movie.â€
Many movies are online just hours after opening in theaters. These are usually poor quality movies recorded with a camcorder, but if you want to watch the movie without paying the money to go to the theater this is the easiest way. You lose the quality of the movie but you still see it for free. This leads to companies not keeping movies in theaters as long as they used to. Now movies spend less than a month in theaters before they are gone. The DVD release is usually out just a few months after the theater release, which creates another problem. DVD movies are leaked anywhere from one to two months before the release date of the DVD. The Transformers 2 DVD was leaked online one month before the release of the DVD itself.
During a hearing in Los Angeles, director Steven Soderbergh said in 2007 the industry brought in over $13.7 billion dollars, imagine what those totals could have been if piracy was reigned in (France 2009). Bootlegs and illegally copied movies have long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. In 2003, The Hulk was leaked online two weeks before the film opened. The man responsible for the theft pled guilty to stealing and distributing it online. In 2005, a copy of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was online mere hours after the opening. Today’s pirates are much more sophisticated and getting better quality equipment with which to distribute illegal movies. Greg Sandoval, who covers media and digital entertainment for CNET news, says that in the digital age, thieves can gain access to near-perfect advance copies of films on DVD; this gives a greater potential to undermine a movie's box-office prospects. Even studios who try to safeguard the movies by watermarking them for easier tracking is not enough since pirates have figured out how to remove the watermark from the copies. "When you're talking about digital content ... it's impossible to lock it down completely" from theft, Sandoval said. "These hackers are very creative. Sometimes, they're one step ahead of the security experts."
Independent filmmakers are sometimes happy with their work being pirated and released on torrents, as is the case with two such independent filmmakers, Jamin Winans and Kiowa Winans. They are happy and grateful for pirates copying their movie “Ink†and distributing it on torrent sites. Within days of being ripped and shared online their little movie gained a sudden leap on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and jumped up over 81 percent in popularity. That is a pretty staggering jump in popularity for a movie that not too many people had heard of. Jamin and Kiowa sent an email to their company’s newsletter explaining what had happened and thanking fans. In it, they had stated they knew it would be ripped off and became the number one downloaded movie on torrent sites, being downloaded 150,000 to 200,000 times; as a result it is ranked number sixteen on IMDb’s movie meter and in the top twenty of most popular movies in the world. This does not prove that piracy is good, yet it is one example of how the attitude of some filmmakers take piracy in stride (Ponto 2009).
Windows 7 is a good indication of how the piracy of software is on the rise. A complete copy of Windows 7 Ultimate was on torrent sites almost two months before the October 22 release date of the software. It was a full version of the operating system complete with a key generator that validated the copy when it was run. But this is just one of the software programs that are available for download. Microsoft Office is one of the largest software programs pirated, and that is due mainly to the price of the software. A small shop in Hong Kong hardly looked like a pirate’s den, but that is exactly what it was. Jimmy Leung was selling pirated programs out of the shop (Kelliher D-2). “I can get the software one month after it is released in the U.S.†says Leung. “This business program,†says Leung pointing at five discs, “would cost you $500 in the United States and I sell it for 50 Hong Kong dollars.†That amounts to $6.50 in the U.S. It takes less than ten seconds to copy from a master disc to a blank disc using a dual disc drive. And this was in 1986.
Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative (GSI) focuses the company’s activities and investments toward combating software piracy into a single initiative. The initiative will focus on three key components, which are education, engineering, and enforcement. The best way Microsoft aims to stop the piracy and protect the consumer is by education. Microsoft is also working with the industry to make consumers aware of the risks associated with downloading and using pirated software. They may be more prone to identity theft, spyware and viruses; they will not receive critical software updates that are provided by the companies. For example Microsoft XP counterfeit users will not be able to download the newest versions of Windows Media Player or any premium add-ons. Microsoft encourages customers to use Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) to make sure they are not a victim of counterfeiting.
Billions of dollars are lost every year because of piracy. But is piracy truly as bad as the media organizations would lead us to believe? Probably not. There is compelling data suggesting digital piracy having little to no effect on overall sales when compared to the state of the economy and the quality of the media. The recording industry once stated the copying of cassette tapes would destroy the music industry. The television industry also once stated VCRs in every home would destroy network broadcasting. Both entertainment industries see billion dollar revenue annually to this day. Apparently their claims about piracy are a bit exaggerated.
