Combating Online Piracy

Combating Online Piracy

Combating Online Piracyhttp://writers-corp.net

The term piracy has been in existence way before the invention of the internet. When we talk about online piracy we refer to that illegal act of copying materials on the internet that are copyrighted. This term originally refers to people in high seas who used to plunder ships but came to be used in such a context by Daniel Defoe who referred to people who were illegally copying his book in 1703 (Reilly 33). There are three main types of online piracies, which include; software piracy, movie piracy, and music piracy. Piracy today is a significant global concern. This does not mean children, who occasionally download illegal materials such as popular songs from the internet and share with friends. Though downloading songs without the rights is wrong, piracy here  is in reference to grandiose business-professionals who get up in the morning and put in a day of stealing copyrighted music, movies, games and software from the internet processing them and distributing them through peer to peer (P2P) or file sharing networks (Hagan 2010).

The effects of online piracy are debatable with proponents arguing that to some extent piracy helps (McCullag, 54). The argument is that you cannot assuredly say that piracy deprives artists off their income as people who pirate would not have bought the product anyway. Further, after pirating people see if they like the product and then start buying it or in the case of an artist like a musician, they attend live performances and eventually end up boosting the artist’s income. The opponents are of a very different opinion. They say it cuts off artists’ incomes, as they cannot manage many sales after their work has been pirated and not to mention artists are backed up by other supporting staff members such as engineers, publishers among others who cannot benefit from events such as live performances. This in the end causes artists of various natures to despair as they are made not to make a living off they art which reduces innovation.

The fight against online piracy and opposition of the same has been there, and it is not going to end just soon. Many techniques have been developed to stop online piracy, and while this has been ongoing, pirates have been working to develop means to beat these measures time after time (McCullag 43). There have been many events globally related to online piracy issues. For instance in Europe, this matter ignites serious political debates and a party that supports piracy has won seats in parliament. Many nations have different laws on online piracy, and this in itself makes combating online piracy an uphill task.

Some measures include legislative measures such as SOPA and PIPA. SOPA is the acronym for Stop Online Piracy Act, which was introduced by Lamar R. Smith in US on October 26 2011. The bill had the view of giving the American law the ability to deal with online piracy. This was to be achieved through allowing courts to bar companies that deal with advertising and payment facilities from dealing with any websites that infringed (Sandoval 75). It would also allow the courts to bar search engines from linking with such sites and issue orders to stop any internet service provider from giving access to the websites. The bill did not stop there. It also addressed the streaming of materials that were copyrighted without authority. Such an offence attracted a jail sentence of not less than five years as per the bill’s proposal.

Proponents were especially pleased by the ability of the new legislation to protect intellectual property from foreign websites, which was previously not the case with flawed earlier laws. They saw this as a move to secure jobs of artists, and their respective supporting staff whereas the opponents of this legislation saw this move as a way of undermining innovation and free speech as an item posted on a single web page would warrantee a whole domain not to be accessible on the internet.

PIPA, on the other hand stands for Protect IP Act. Patrick Leahy a US senator on May 12 2011 with a view to strengthening the copyright laws to deal with copyright issues related with websites operated especially out of the US introduced this bill in US. This act was a redo of Combating Online infringement and Counterfeits Act, which had failed in 2010. In PIPA infringement was taken to mean distributing counterfeit goods or illegal copies. This bill like SOPA also recommended similar actions that are it required other entities to stop conducting business with infringing websites. This bill enjoyed the support from many companies in the US such as Motion Picture Association of America, National Cable, and Telecommunications Association among others as well as sharp protest. PIPA and SOPA were heavily protested against. For instance about 7000 websites conducted a service blackout protesting against the bills. Google had collected over seven million signatures being boycotts of companies that supported the bills. In New York City, a rally of opposition was even held.

On the wake of online piracy, one would want to know about copyright infringement. A copyright holder has certain privileges availed to him/her by law. Such include the right to reproduce or make copies of his/her copyrighted work, distribute it, display it, perform it or doing some derivative works from the same. If you partake in any of the above without written permission from the copyright owner you have indulged in copyright infringement. Once you are found guilty of any of the above you are liable to paying damages to the copyright holder. To date over 18,000 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued P2P users. Most of these users have been college students and parents of high school students (Fisk 2009). In so far as copyright infringement is concerned in civil courts for instance lawsuits can be filed directly against the infringers or against other who facilitate the infringements such as websites who provide softwares that allow illegal copying of copyrighted materials. The MGM studios for facilitating copyright infringement sued Grokster and Stream cast and in 2005 MGM studios won the law suit. The accused were held liable as they advertised themselves as a company that could source such material to people on the internet. However in some countries downloading copyrighted material is legal. These countries include Canada, Spain, The Netherlands, and Panama. In Canada downloading pirated files is perfectly legal so long as it is not done for a commercial purpose although the distribution of such files is illegal.

In china online piracy has been rampant over the years and the recently in 2012 that the Chinese government has vowed to put measures in place to deal with online piracy. The government proposed that this is to be achieved through supervision and inter-coordination of involved agencies. The departments that are involved with combating piracy in china are the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Public Security, and The National Copyright Administration. In 2011, there were updated rules to deal with piracy that revised penalties for piracy. There are about 450 million people online in China. No other place in the world beats this population, and if there is a country that needs to do vigilant fighting against IPR violations is china. Business leaders in US and Europe have recently urged Beijing to do more to counter IPR violations. China still remains the largest market of counterfeited and pirated materials.

Copyright is also given to software owners. People pirate software for various reasons but mainly for cost reasons. People want software for free. Business Software Alliance estimates that about 41% of software being used in computers today is pirated, and this causes software owners to lose billions of dollars in income. There are others, who pirate software to do business with such as selling of pirated ant viruses among other software. Online sharing of files has also been seen as one of the factors that has helped increase piracy. This is a profit making business where people share pirated files on the internet. Such websites that facilitated on line sharing of files include media fire, mega upload and pirate bay among others. The US government due to massive pressure from copyright owners shut Mega upload. Combating online piracy will come at a cost. The amount of money required running even legislation such as SOPA and PIPA is some little amount of money not to mention that some measures that have been suggested by these legislators come with enormous disadvantages. Some measures such as those of baring whole domains due to just a single uploaded pirated material, shutting down online file sharing sites would cripple the internet. Just think of trying to search for a topic on Google, Bing or other search engines and you cannot find any related information because such sites have been bared.

Various governments have been trying to explore ways of retaining only websites they consider legitimate in operation and shutter the rest. However, they have better be warned that piracy always finds its way even in legitimate websites. The most efficient way is to explore methods of making piracy hard to go through with accompanied by diligent legislation that do not curtail freedom on the internet or that cripple the internet. For instance, some software companies include lines of codes that make it impossible for pirates to make copies of the software. Some games cannot be played so long as you do not own an original copy as during the playing the game you will be required to refer to the physical component that came with such an original copy. This is just to short list such measures as there are many that are in place and yet more that can be invented. Some legislation as well is compelling enough to combat online piracy but lack proper administration. Therefore, it is recommended that involved parties make the legislation work through vigilant enforcement. Many countries have highly contrasting laws on piracy. If piracy is to be addressed, I feel there has to exist harmony otherwise such measures to combat piracy will to some extent end up futile. Piracy tends to find its way into every legitimate route within the World Wide Web. Therefore, the elimination of the problem of online piracy by using the shutting down approach of illegitimate websites as well as services would imply that the internet can also be eliminated as we know it (Chapman 2012). Therefore, in the fight against online piracy there has to be put measures that the internet being a hugely essential tool in all aspects of the modern world is not brought down together with piracy.

Work cited

 Reilly, M. The Stop Online Piracy Act: what business leaders can do about it? Industry Leaders Magazine, 2011.

 Sandoval, G. Hollywoods SOPA testimony links job loss to piracy, 2011.

 Albanesius, G. Will online piracy bill combat rogue websites or cripple the internet? 2011.

 McCullagh, D. SOPA Opponents, 2011.

Butler, B.  Stop Online Piracy Act.  Library Copyright Alliance, 2011.