The Piracy War

[Kokoro]

The fight for and against piracy(illegal file sharing, not

) has been going on for a long time. One doesn't need to look very hard to find some history on it.

There have been many results of this battle; the controversial use of DRM in games is a good example. Furthermore, the effects of these results are further reaching. The DRM in games is easily defeated, because anything that can be engineered can be reverse engineered. Therefore, the only ones that the DRM bothers are the legitimate users. However, it is somewhat effective for online play. Without cracked servers, it is much harder to play games online... for now.

I asked myself, when will it end? can it end? I think, probably never and probably not. Simply because on one side, anti-piracy organisations(and who they represent) love money. On the other side, hackers love the challenge of releasing cracked content quickly, some people love the free exchange of information, and a lot just love free stuff.

A collection of TorrentFreak articles highlight the futile nature of the battle in the U.S. on both sides: There were some sensible arguments and investigations with interesting results, yet, just days later, the fight continues. At the same time, no matter how many times the piracy community take a hit, they bounce right back like a game of whac-a-mole. (Hell, just look at the history of The Pirate Bay.)

What do y'all think will be the results and effects, both small and large, of this continued battle? Perhaps a crash and burn? Could one side virtually win out over the other? It seems like piracy is winning due to how easy it is to pirate if one wants to... anyone disagree?

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

It seems no different from cops and robbers of the past. Someone starts stealing stuff from people's houses, someone invents a lock, someone figures out lockpicking, someone invents an alarm, someone figures out how to disarm alarms and so on and so on and so on. I suspect with net security and pirating it will be the same (perhaps faster since the pirates need not leave home! )

If you're interested in stopping the pirating though, just do the impossible. Invent the impenetrable defense.

 

[Jaico]

I've been thinking about this (somewhat) recently myself, actually. If I had to place money on one side, I think it'd go to the pirates - I really don't think that "copyright protectors" are going to be able to silence everyone's voice; like those articles imply, it's too time-consuming and expensive for the corporations to go after everyone who has a hand in this, especially when there's little to no impact in the end. I have a feeling that piracy will end up something like counterfeit "designer" stuff - not technically allowed, but still there if you need it/go looking for it/everyone knows about it, and the government won't do anything serious about it (or doesn't care enough to do anything about it).

 

[zxc]

The pirates are winning because the status quo doesn't have a clue about tech. On most other fronts, the status quo is winning.

 

[Apotheosis]

IMO, the epic battle between the infocapitalists and the infoanarchists could end with any of the following scenarios:

1) Regulation of the internet to prevent piracy to the point where it's a rare phenomenon. I'd guess that the "regulation" part is highly likely, although I sincerely doubt that the desired ends will be met.

2) Infosocialism or a similarly radical idea is adopted.

My best guess is that the battle continues indefinitely, but I could be wrong.

 

[Kuu]

I doubt all those huge losses that the movie and music industry claim. Most of the things that I've seen people pirate are things they would otherwise never buy, in a lot of cases due to unavailability... they are in fact getting free exposure from a market they were not even capitalizing on... Word-of-mouth due to pirated content has allowed obscure independent content makers to break out into a market dominated by massive corporations and their omnipresent advertisement campaigns.

Also, piracy has allowed a class of people that would otherwise be economically inactive to become productive creators... for a total net gain for all of us.


The pirates will win, but it will be a long time until the industry changes to work with it instead of against it. The market has changed and unless you have a really high quality product and brand loyalty, people aren't going to pay ridiculously high prices for some lousy thing they can get for free. Content makers need to reorganize their business models so they can offer their products for significantly lower prices (or free) and find a way to make their money some other way.

I support infoanarchism and think that we'd be much better off in a lot of areas if we simply shared information and tools instead of holding it in under locks by absurd ancient convoluted patent laws that foster monopolies and make little sense in our contemporary world. Alas, sensible things for people are rarely understood by profit-focused corporations...

Will we see a decidedly more free 21st century once a networked world becomes increasingly aware of the shortcomings of the old models?

 

[crippli]

http://thepiratebay.se/blog

PRESS RELEASE, NEW PROVIDER FOR TPB

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 3 MARCH 102, 평양 (PYONGYANG).
The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.
A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.
This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.
We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country's changing view of access to information. It's a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it's also ones duty to grab their hand.

 

[Absurdity]

Communication technology goes through cycles of openness and innovation followed by consolidation and strict control of the medium/market by a few key players with the assistance of the government. However eventually the industry stagnates until some new change opens up opportunities and the cycle begins again. See Tim Wu's The Master Switch.

Film making got started in Hollywood as would-be directors and filmmakers fled the eastern US states where the government could enforce Thomas Edison's patents on film making technology. Obviously the industry consolidated after that, but there have been pushes at opening the field over the years with the rise of television sets, and more recently with indie films, digital video cameras, youtube, etc.