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I've been jumbling my thoughts recently, and I need to vent about this aspect.
First off, piracy existed before the internet. It will exist if the entire world wide web crashes. It is not a new phenomenon. It is a mindset, a correlation between something, and our desire for it and the trouble in obtaining that something. So saying that online piracy is killing the music industry, is like saying imitation designer clothes are killing off the fashion industry. Why yes, dear reader, that imitation Rolex, that imitation Prada, they are a form of piracy as well. When the internet was in its infancy, people pirated using cassetes, CDs, VHS, anything which could record and replay something. And if you shut down the internet, it will simply revert back to those standards, those means. It will not stop.
And if you take into consideration that piracy existed before the internet, and take into account that even the complete shutdown of the internet to be incapable of destroying piracy, then fighting piracy is a losing battle (much like the War on Drugs). If you TRULY want to fight piracy, my advice is to get behind the mindset of most pirates. Change the opinions, their views, their desires. When piracy becoms unfashionable, outdated, cancerous, THAT is the day when it will end. Untill then, it will evolve, adapt, just as fast as humans adapt (so a super computer could be able to dupe piracy as well), since it is a human desire.
However, the internet has improved conditions. It has enabled piracy to flourish. And I doubt that there is any way to truly combat this aspect. Beause as soon as you censor, disable or prevent in any way, information to be transmitted or recieved, you are defying the very nature and fundemental idea behind the internet, which is the transmition of information. Computers do not care what the information is, A brand new song, or a 10 year old game that is not for sale anywhere anymore. Trying to tell a computer "do NOT transmit anything with this in the file" not going to affect it much, since we (humans) can look at the data, and rearange it as instructed somewhere. For example: "Do NOT transmit files that contains the sequence (AB302C). A pirate will simply send 2 files, one having (AB3) and the other (02C). " The second problem is encoding. I forget which company had it, but some company presented a challenge to all the hackers and crackers around the world, to break its (128bit I think) encryption key. I know that it took them more than 2 years to break it, since the best way then was a brute force method, simply trying every possible combination. I imagine that there exist, nowadays, a far stronger encryption, meaning that the encoding and encrypting data would be a nightmare for anyone trying to tell your computer or your provider that something cannot be sent or recieved. And the basic windows encryption would be good enough for small scale files (like an album). And the day encryption is disallowed is the day when all the hackers and crackers rejoice, since every goverment and corporation communication over the internet will be left wide open to attack.
The other part is that the internet should remain free. Censoring the internet is like saying "You cannot say this and this over the phone". Or that you cannot write something and send it through the mail. The internet should remain free. At all times. It is a means of communication. It has its ups and downs, its bonuses and its faults. But the reason why it has become so popular, so successful, is that it is a means of mass communication, where anyone can express themselves and be heard by opponents and/or likeminded people. It is excellent for debate, for the exchange of ideas, on a rapid and worldwide scale. To sum it up: LEAVE THE INTERNET ALONE AND FREE! Do not use ANY excuse to shut it down. If you do, you are censoring what people may say, may do. You can look at it, of course but do NOT prevent its fundemental principle, which is the exchange of information.
Piracy is not always a bad thing (gasp!). It does contribute to the original content in the form of publicity and awareness. Figures here vary considerably, and my opinion is that it varies depending on the product, much more so than on the pirates. Think of it this way: The more trouble there is with the product, or obtaining the product, the more likely it is to be pirated. There are lot of variables here and I simply don't think I can present even half of them.
A few people have grasped onto and embraced piracy. Radiohead, indie developers, artists big and small. They do not directly fight it with laws and obstructions, but rather, they give it out and ask for returns as the consumer sees fit. The "pay what you want" method, and honestly, I believe it to be the best solution so far. As many music artists will tell you, they don't get a lot of money from album sales. Not even from song sales. The biggest income they have is from shows and concerts. From merchandice and live performances. And in this regard the internet and piracy is an increadibly valuable tool. The availability and spread of information about product makes it such a great tool.
Many people also use piracy as a form of preview. Myself and my brother included. The products and companies that we like, we will either buy the product we like, or we will try to compensate in some other way. Those that we believe NOT to be worth what they want, we don't buy. And if you look at it short-term, yes it is a lost sale. But long term, people will be too burnt, too frustrated with it all that they will stop buying alltogether, since all the products are going to suck. Even the good ones. The same thing that happened to me and the music industry a while back, I refused to buy or listen to anythig or anyone, as I will not fork over 20 euros for 1, maybe 2 good songs and the rest being gibberish.
That said, piracy is not a always a good thing. It stiffles up innovation and development, it DOES cost companies of their money. And an argument I've seen around was "They make so much, they can handle it!". Erm, no, a company, even one with record sales, still has to pay employees, still has to operate. If enough people pirate, they are costing someone a raise or even a job. I will not get into the whole company leaders paychecks debate, leave it for some other time.
Piracy also helps hard criminals. You might be scratching your head right now, but yes, tech-savvy gangs, mafia, drug cartels, they all have a bit to make from piracy. It is the same (again) as with any other drug. If there is a black market, then the illegals will try to cash in on it. And piracy is a form of a black market, even though a rather cheap one.
I would like to point out one thing here. The innovation and development. In my opinion it DOEs stiffle it a bit. But not as much as the media these days might want you to believe. Moreso than piracy, I believe that (in the USA) copyright trolls are stiffling up innovation. If you are LEGALY not allowed to invent something that is not on the market, because you get sued for everything you have, simply because it looks or functions similarly to something someone thought of before, but never utilised it, then innovation will stagnate. Inventors and innovators lose far more to them, than to piracy, which will usually give full credit to the inventor. Hell, sometimes pirates will pay the creator back (though it is not that often).
In conclusion, combating piracy is going to be a losing battle. Console gaming is going a tremendeus way and is partly succesefull. That is until people start modding their consoles, reverse engineering them or emulating them on the computer, then it is just another PC part of information. It has happened before and it will continue to happen in the future. To truly combat piracy, change their minds, not their means.
My apologies for the long post, and I would be grateful for an outside view on the subject.
First off, piracy existed before the internet. It will exist if the entire world wide web crashes. It is not a new phenomenon. It is a mindset, a correlation between something, and our desire for it and the trouble in obtaining that something. So saying that online piracy is killing the music industry, is like saying imitation designer clothes are killing off the fashion industry. Why yes, dear reader, that imitation Rolex, that imitation Prada, they are a form of piracy as well. When the internet was in its infancy, people pirated using cassetes, CDs, VHS, anything which could record and replay something. And if you shut down the internet, it will simply revert back to those standards, those means. It will not stop.
And if you take into consideration that piracy existed before the internet, and take into account that even the complete shutdown of the internet to be incapable of destroying piracy, then fighting piracy is a losing battle (much like the War on Drugs). If you TRULY want to fight piracy, my advice is to get behind the mindset of most pirates. Change the opinions, their views, their desires. When piracy becoms unfashionable, outdated, cancerous, THAT is the day when it will end. Untill then, it will evolve, adapt, just as fast as humans adapt (so a super computer could be able to dupe piracy as well), since it is a human desire.
However, the internet has improved conditions. It has enabled piracy to flourish. And I doubt that there is any way to truly combat this aspect. Beause as soon as you censor, disable or prevent in any way, information to be transmitted or recieved, you are defying the very nature and fundemental idea behind the internet, which is the transmition of information. Computers do not care what the information is, A brand new song, or a 10 year old game that is not for sale anywhere anymore. Trying to tell a computer "do NOT transmit anything with this in the file" not going to affect it much, since we (humans) can look at the data, and rearange it as instructed somewhere. For example: "Do NOT transmit files that contains the sequence (AB302C). A pirate will simply send 2 files, one having (AB3) and the other (02C). " The second problem is encoding. I forget which company had it, but some company presented a challenge to all the hackers and crackers around the world, to break its (128bit I think) encryption key. I know that it took them more than 2 years to break it, since the best way then was a brute force method, simply trying every possible combination. I imagine that there exist, nowadays, a far stronger encryption, meaning that the encoding and encrypting data would be a nightmare for anyone trying to tell your computer or your provider that something cannot be sent or recieved. And the basic windows encryption would be good enough for small scale files (like an album). And the day encryption is disallowed is the day when all the hackers and crackers rejoice, since every goverment and corporation communication over the internet will be left wide open to attack.
The other part is that the internet should remain free. Censoring the internet is like saying "You cannot say this and this over the phone". Or that you cannot write something and send it through the mail. The internet should remain free. At all times. It is a means of communication. It has its ups and downs, its bonuses and its faults. But the reason why it has become so popular, so successful, is that it is a means of mass communication, where anyone can express themselves and be heard by opponents and/or likeminded people. It is excellent for debate, for the exchange of ideas, on a rapid and worldwide scale. To sum it up: LEAVE THE INTERNET ALONE AND FREE! Do not use ANY excuse to shut it down. If you do, you are censoring what people may say, may do. You can look at it, of course but do NOT prevent its fundemental principle, which is the exchange of information.
Piracy is not always a bad thing (gasp!). It does contribute to the original content in the form of publicity and awareness. Figures here vary considerably, and my opinion is that it varies depending on the product, much more so than on the pirates. Think of it this way: The more trouble there is with the product, or obtaining the product, the more likely it is to be pirated. There are lot of variables here and I simply don't think I can present even half of them.
A few people have grasped onto and embraced piracy. Radiohead, indie developers, artists big and small. They do not directly fight it with laws and obstructions, but rather, they give it out and ask for returns as the consumer sees fit. The "pay what you want" method, and honestly, I believe it to be the best solution so far. As many music artists will tell you, they don't get a lot of money from album sales. Not even from song sales. The biggest income they have is from shows and concerts. From merchandice and live performances. And in this regard the internet and piracy is an increadibly valuable tool. The availability and spread of information about product makes it such a great tool.
Many people also use piracy as a form of preview. Myself and my brother included. The products and companies that we like, we will either buy the product we like, or we will try to compensate in some other way. Those that we believe NOT to be worth what they want, we don't buy. And if you look at it short-term, yes it is a lost sale. But long term, people will be too burnt, too frustrated with it all that they will stop buying alltogether, since all the products are going to suck. Even the good ones. The same thing that happened to me and the music industry a while back, I refused to buy or listen to anythig or anyone, as I will not fork over 20 euros for 1, maybe 2 good songs and the rest being gibberish.
That said, piracy is not a always a good thing. It stiffles up innovation and development, it DOES cost companies of their money. And an argument I've seen around was "They make so much, they can handle it!". Erm, no, a company, even one with record sales, still has to pay employees, still has to operate. If enough people pirate, they are costing someone a raise or even a job. I will not get into the whole company leaders paychecks debate, leave it for some other time.
Piracy also helps hard criminals. You might be scratching your head right now, but yes, tech-savvy gangs, mafia, drug cartels, they all have a bit to make from piracy. It is the same (again) as with any other drug. If there is a black market, then the illegals will try to cash in on it. And piracy is a form of a black market, even though a rather cheap one.
I would like to point out one thing here. The innovation and development. In my opinion it DOEs stiffle it a bit. But not as much as the media these days might want you to believe. Moreso than piracy, I believe that (in the USA) copyright trolls are stiffling up innovation. If you are LEGALY not allowed to invent something that is not on the market, because you get sued for everything you have, simply because it looks or functions similarly to something someone thought of before, but never utilised it, then innovation will stagnate. Inventors and innovators lose far more to them, than to piracy, which will usually give full credit to the inventor. Hell, sometimes pirates will pay the creator back (though it is not that often).
In conclusion, combating piracy is going to be a losing battle. Console gaming is going a tremendeus way and is partly succesefull. That is until people start modding their consoles, reverse engineering them or emulating them on the computer, then it is just another PC part of information. It has happened before and it will continue to happen in the future. To truly combat piracy, change their minds, not their means.
My apologies for the long post, and I would be grateful for an outside view on the subject.
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