Digital Piracy Essay

The Debate over Dealing with Digital Piracy

Digital piracy is one of the major topics being debated over these days. People have many viewpoints and opinions regarding the subject, so it can be difficult to decide whose side to take. "Digital piracy" itself is rather nebulous. When it comes to what can be accepted as data sharing and digital sharing, there are a lot of ideas and opinions as to what uses with digital media are acceptable or not. What is digital piracy? In it's purest meaning, it's copying, distributing, and/or possessing a form of digital media without "authorized permission". For example, if a person were to copy a song he got on a album, then give his friend a copy, it would be considered piracy. Even casually sharing a song would mean the recipient got it for free (Forget the Spin, Taping Is Not Killing Music, 2003). Therefore, he essentially stole it, according to the definition of digital piracy. If the example didn't make it clear, digital piracy of music is probably the most common. Since people love music and can share it in digital form these days, it's easily one of the most shared and common forms of media. It also intertwines with other forms of media like movies and video games as well. I believe that "piracy" is not the business-destroying scourge that many companies and other property owners consider it to be (Dodd, 2011) since it can be positive for a number of reasons.

Digital piracy can allow recognition for media that is being pirated. A rather notable company known as Napster had a service that revolved around peer-to-peer file sharing of music. This means that people in general can copy and share music with each other through this service. The music files were also in the versatile MP3 format. A lot of people were able to share their favorite songs and let others know about their favorite musicians as well.  Unfortunately for Napster, they were not allowed to support music sharing as a company and as a result received many lawsuits. They eventually dropped the sharing service in favor of a paid one.  ITunes is another well-known music service that does allow one to buy music for usually about one dollar per song. While it is very popular, it hasn't stopped people from sharing their music with their peers much like Napster allowed with their service. Oftentimes, music has spread and gotten recognition because of peer-to-peer file-sharing. This means more people interested in the works of the copyright holders. In turn, the positive attention will be very beneficial for the creators ("Digital Piracy May Benefit Companies", 2008). It's clear that the attention that piracy gives to media can make up for the losses through recognition.

Another reason why piracy is needlessly pretentious as an issue among copyright holders is because much of piracy revolves around the Internet and the freedom it gives to people with media. The Internet has made it easier for people to upload visual media and share it with others as well as copy media. With DVD and Blu-Ray being the primary ways of keeping media as opposed to video cassettes, people don't have to worry about the copy degradation that happens with cassettes when they are copied too many times. How are people responding to this? There have been a lot of groups that have rights to the media being pirated that feel as though the media sharing amongst peers is detrimental to their business. That includes the distributors that don't at all profit from sharing media and merely want to share. They have attempted to use various forms of copy protection with digital rights management (DRM) being the most common. DRM basically limits what one can do with digital media to discourage piracy. The many forms of DRM include limiting the ability of a movie from a DVD to be copied and data added to music CD's for the purpose of making ripping music difficult. Many people find that DRM can be very restrictive. In many ways, DRM is forcing more and more people to turn to piracy, resulting in DRM often encouraging the very activities they were made to prevent. Often, people digitally remove the DRM and  render it useless. People dislike their new-found freedom within the digital age being restricted so there is not a lot of public support for DRM. Torrents were the direct result of this. Torrents are files that contain data suitable for targeting files on the Internet and downloading them. The files themselves don't contain the data from the files they are supposed to target so, by itself, the torrent file is useless. But if a person were to get a BitTorrent client, programs made to work with torrent files, they could use the torrent to download a file from an alternate location through the Internet. Normally, torrent files are an effective way of hosting downloads on sites without actually hosting the file itself. However, it has become a "gold mine" for sharing files that legally, one shouldn't be sharing such as copyrighted media. The largest BitTorrent site of the World Wide Web is called "The Pirate Bay". They have gone through a lot of legal trouble since they support file sharing on their site and outright admitted they are pro-piracy. But as stated before, since they host torrent files and not the actual copyrighted files themselves, they have been able to get away with their business. This is why they refer to themselves as "the world's most resilient BitTorrent site" They have been resistant to all the charges pressed upon them and are still running smoothly to this very day. Aside from the fact they were able to loophole around the copyright claims, the site is also very popular. It is usually very easy to get media through the site. The Pirate Bay has also criticize the entertainment industry and accused them of taking away rights of the consumer which they primarily mean the ability to share media. The public clearly support the casual sharing of media and to go against it would really be a lost cause to try and convince the public as a whole to think otherwise.

Digital piracy has been around for a while without debate. Now companies go against piracy are more "extreme" in their many attempts to stop it now than years ago when people were sharing media then so. Many consumers have a less-than-positive view of the idea of going against pirates in general. They feel that the presence of DRM in media can be very intrusive when trying to enjoy media. For companies, public relations really go sour when they are found making very questionable attempts at preventing piracy. Besides the intrusive DRM, many companies have also attempted to track the activities of people using their content. In the case of computer CDs, it is usually in the form of adware that can install on a computer and track what the user is doing. In some cases, it's not even mentioned in the package or case of the CD. There no warning of mentioning of it and the adware is also hidden so a person can't easily notice it. Due to the general taboo of tracking one's activities, it didn't last, but there are other ways that DRM can be applied. Recently, with certain programs, especially video games like Diablo 3, businesses have attempted to try and make DRM that requires constant Internet connection to use the programs. The problem is that even in modern times, not everyone has a constant Internet connection 24/7. It is still a way to track others if they are sharing the program. In terms of actual tracking, it is a good idea. But because of the fact that a constant Internet connection can be too much for many to handle, this can be a problem if companies want people to take the programs and services that require this seriously. The attempts that companies make to stop piracy often do more harm than good when it becomes intrusive and media sharing.

Finally, it is generally agreed however that not all digital media is easy to get, even if you have the money so sharing media allows more people to access many forms of media. This is the case on the Internet. For example, if someone wants to get their favorite TV show again in some format, they may be lucky if the original producers release it on a format like DVD or they gave their rights to another company and they re-release it. A lot of times however, this is not the case. Usually, the only way for them to get a copy is to find if people are sharing it online. With the Internet, many people are able to share new and old media quite easily. They have been able to upload whatever media they found for others to enjoy. This can also be the case if a person doesn't live in wherever area the media in question has been released.  If one has interest in something has been released in another region, they may be able to import it. But a potential obstacle is regional coding that can prevent it from working in another region. The Internet usually averts this by making a copy available to download since someone else may have found it. Many people explain that sharing media can get recognition to the creators by others, which in turn will result in people being interested in buying things from the creators. Many companies seem to have realized this. ITunes allows people to get a whole variety of music. Nintendo's Virtual Console and Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade have allowed people to play games of previous generations on current  video game systems. Older movies and TV shows are slowly getting special edition DVD releases and some even get remastered releases on Blu-Ray. There is no doubt that companies are trying to archive older forms of media. This doesn't fix the problem completely though, as there will always be an older form of media that people many want but but can't acquire. For certain forms of media that were owned by companies that are now defunct or just gone, even those services that would normally preserve them may not get the proper permission to host them and the the media in question will fall into obscurity.

In conclusion, I believe that digital piracy should be encouraged. After all, trying to make it hard to copy forms of media may slow down piracy a little but it won't last long since many digital pirates can remove DRM sooner or later. It's clear that also going after people who merely share media without compensation is not a fight worth going into  due to the fact that it can make a company look meddlesome. There is also absolutely no need in going after those who merely want to experience something that since without piracy, they cannot require it otherwise. Finally, recognition from the sharing of media can more than make up for the small losses from digital piracy in the long run and and allow the preservation of media that would otherwise fall into obscurity.  This is my closing determination in regards to the subject.