In all the discussion of internet piracy and the debate over
what kind of laws should be implemented to curb the massive amounts of pirated
material, little seems to be said about who is stealing what. Some nations
stand out for pirating certain types of material, and some of those nations are
placed on a U.S. government watch list.
Movies and television programs are a popular target for
piracy and Russia leads the world in dollar value of pirated videos at $250,000,000
in lost revenue. China follows closely at $168,000,000 in pirated videos. It
makes since that Russia would lead China in this statistic even though China
has a larger population, because more of Russia’s population has access to
internet access per capita.
In terms of music piracy, the U.S. leads the field with nearly
a 100,000,000 downloads. The United Kingdom and Italy placed second and third
with more than 76,000,000 between them. Music piracy got its start in the U.S.,
and the fact that we still lead the world should come as no surprise. New laws
and regulations targeted at limiting piracy are controversial in the U.S. as
people fear it could lead to more intense internet regulation. It will be
interesting to see if legal and low cost music download sites can bring more
users back to a legitimate means of purchasing music.
The U.S. government’s own trade report spotlights China and
India as leaders in the use of illegal trade secrets and patented material.
China receives special attention for theft of trade secrets outside of China. Because
so many U.S. companies outsource production and other business practices to
these countries and such problems are always a risk of outsourcing, this will likely
remain a major problem for some time.
As each part of the world can see what types of material are
the major targets of piracy there, they can better understand what kinds of
laws and regulations are needed to combat them in the future.
For further reading
and any of the above statistics see the following sources: http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-video-piracy-countries-map.html
http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/05012013%202013%20Special%20301%20Report.pdf
I think that the way companies and businesses are trying to combat internet piracy nowadays is making things cheaper or free for users. For example, in order to combat music piracy new companies like spotify or rhapsody have emerged. Also, in order to watch tv series online, abc for example, now allows its viewers to watch episodes for free with some commercials.
ReplyDeleteI use to only watch my tv shows online through www.tv-links.com but recently it has been getting tougher and tougher to find decent links. It is definitely evident that new regulations are being put into place. I now use sources like amazon and itunes store because of this.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Paulina, one way they fight against piracy is offering the entire program for free and then offering paid features that can't really be pirated. This is actually called the Micro Transaction model. Many companies nowadays are adopting this model.
ReplyDeleteI use to download thousands of songs on Rapsody and other forms of free music sites. Now I only buy them through iTunes. Regulations have definitely made it harder for people to freely use items or media. I know that there are still places to download free music and new movies. Will the government ever remove all of these type of sites. It is not fair for the makers of music or movies to not profit from the users but will they ever be able to control this 100%?
ReplyDeleteRegulations have changed the way people download materials in todsy society. With stricter and harsher consequences for pirates, the judgement of piracy should be declining. But in actuality with the advancement of technology and loopholes in the internet the threat of goverment repercussions are not a big threats to pirates. I feel that regulations will slow down the act of piracy occuring on the internet,but in actuality piracy will never go away. With thkme the act of piracy will become easier and flexible for many users to commit.
ReplyDeleteA great example of how China has caused destruction in the US by stealing trade secrets is the company Nortel Networks. This company was a huge multinational telecommunications company established in 1895. From the mid 1990's - 2000's, Chinese companies have stolen trade secrets such as program coding and been able to produce equivalent products/services at a fraction of the cost. This was not the entire problem for Nortel but definitely contributed to their bankruptcy and dispersion.
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