Recently, I read an article published in the New York Times that compared stopping internet piracy to the very popular game of Whac-A-Mole. Once you hit a mole with the hammer another mole quickly pops back up. This game is very similar to internet piracy. Countries around the world have been making countless efforts in shutting down websites that offer pirated movies, tv shows, etc. Some would say that they have been successful in doing so but after reading this article I am skeptical. Every time that a major internet piracy website is shut down another one soon appears.
Early in 2012, the website known as Pirate Bay, one of the largest BitTorrent piracy websites was finally shut down. Authorities blocked people from entering the site. As a result, the creators of Pirate Bay offered the code that ran their entire site and made it downloadable to everyone on the web. Every person that downloaded this code now ran basically a smaller version of this website straight from their home. As I stated earlier, this is the problem with shutting down internet piracy websites. Once you shut down one site, many others will pop up and piracy will continue like nothing ever happened.
Also in early 2012, a man named Mr. Spock, a Pirate Bay collaborator, stated in a blog post that his team was planning to build drones that would allow people to download illegal content wirelessly. This would present another huge problem because governments would then have to basically shoot down these drones to stop the content from being downloaded. Others have also talked about setting up servers in secure bank vaults and in underwater locations.
"Piracy won't go away," said Ernesto Van Der Sar, the editor of the site Torrent Freak. Countries have tried for many years to shut down piracy but it still continues. The Whac-A-Mole effect is in full force when it comes to internet piracy. As long as it is easy and available to offer new sites when others shut down, piracy will continue to run wild.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/sunday-review/internet-pirates-will-always-win.html?_r=0
WHAC-A-MOLE is true, once you shut the door they will always figure out another way to open one. today with Youtube there is so much content available so all it takes is one person to get hold of it and upload it then boom its available to public. dealing with piracy is sort of like dealing with privacy online. how much of the content we post is private or harmless to us and we can speak our mind, put any personal info online making it public in the hopes of not being harm.... yea it doesn't work. piracy is a disease, is there a cure for that? only time will tell. ask a law enforcement officer they will tell you there is because there are 99 ways to commit a crime but 101 ways to get caught.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why the pirates of pirate bay and other sites are so adamant. How do these sites benefit from distributing illegal content? Don't the risks outweigh the benefits for the people hosting these sites? And wouldn't it be costly for pirate bay to create wireless drones? What are drones? I thought that was a star wars term? Haha
ReplyDeleteI understand why the government and record companies are actively pursuing websites allowing illegal downloads because those artist work hard and are having their "paychecks" stolen from them. If it was any other profession than entertainment losing money from theft, this would be a much more serious issue. A song is like $1.29! I don't think its fair to everyone on the production side of making a song to let these companies go free to keep creating websites. I think they should shut all of them down (even though i still download illegal stuff) I would understand if that privilege was taken away
ReplyDeleteIf piracy is illegal, then wouldn't restricting the pirates be a lot easier than it seems. Now a days, with internet and technology, we could easily track down computer's IP addresses and owners. Wouldn't the government be able to track them down a lot easier and faster now a days and enforce strict punishments? For this reason alone, it has caused me to be hesitant to even participate on illegal downloading websites.
ReplyDeleteI know that this is a serious issue, but what is the government really doing about it if it is like the "whac-a-mole?" Are these people that start these websites going to jail? If nothing serious is happening to the starters, then what prevents new ones from beginning. Also do the starters of these websites gain profit or do they just do it to fulfill the needs of society to get free stuff?
ReplyDeletePiracy in movies and TV programs never goes away because the demand for these articles is incredible. The only way you can shut down this eliminating the demand. How can you do that? When someone can answer this question then they can shut the piracy down. This is not difference than the piracy in China Town, New York. You can fight the piracy but never eliminated. The piracy is everywhere and easy to access. You do not have to be a computer expert to have access to this websites plus they are user friendly.
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