Rough Seas Ahead For Internet Piracy

BY ALEX BARNARD

Richard O’Dwyer is a college student in England who created a website named TVShack.net.   This website was a search engine to find TV shows and movies online, and although it hosted no illegal content (instead it directed users to other sites) and was located in the United Kingdom, O’Dwyer managed to attract the attention of the US government.  TVShack was taken down along with seven other websites that linked users to content that violated Federal copyright infringement laws.   Being a citizen of the UK, the United States ordered an extradition for O’Dwyer.  If extradited the US government could sentence O’Dwyer up to ten years in prison for simply pointing others towards content owned by American companies.  O’Dwyer’s site was taken down in 2010, and legal action against copyright infringing Internet users continues to increase as a multitude of new laws are being proposed.

Earlier this year the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) stirred up quite a bit of controversy before voting on these issues was indefinitely delayed in Congress.  SOPA and PIPA would punish websites like YouTube and Google that linked to or hosted copyright material, and opponents of these bills felt that by punishing these sites hosting copyright infringing content, the sites would quickly go out of business.  This proposed legislation would give the Department of Justice power to take down any websites that content creators believed were “violating their copyrights”.  Both the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America championed the bills.  Support in Congress was split with about half of the Senate supporting PIPA and 15% of representatives from the House supporting SOPA.

An assortment of internet companies including eBay, Facebook, and Google voiced strong disdain for the bill, and “hacktivist” organizations like Anonymous took down sites belonging to the FBI, the Department of Justice, the MPAA, and other supporters of the proposed anti-piracy legislation.  Hacktivists are groups of computer hackers who use nonviolent (yet illegal) computer techniques to either spread their message or create chaos with the hope of promoting social or political change.  The public became aware of these bills, and millions signed petitions against them. The White House condemned this proposed legislation on its website, claiming that the two bills “reduce freedom of expression” and “undermine the dynamic, innovative global internet.”  The bills’ sponsors Senator Harry Reid and Representative Lamar Smith later decided to indefinitely delay consideration of this legislation.

Despite the apparent defeat of this legislation, anti-piracy measures continue to increase around the world.  Japan introduced a strict anti-piracy law that punishes anyone with illegally downloaded music or movies with up to two years of jail time and a 2 million yen (about $25,000) fine, while those uploading copyrighted material can face up to 10 years in prison and a 10 million yen ($128,300) fine.

Earlier this year the European Union faced a similar snafu when they proposed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was similar in design to SOPA and PIPA.  Although ACTA was turned down, many of its provisions have found their way into the new Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which will crack down on piracy in the European Union and Canada.  The most controversial part of CETA is that it forces internet services providers (ISPs) to turn in any customers suspected of illegally downloading materials. It would also have them take down content reported to infringing upon intellectual property.

Internet Service Providers in the United States are taking a very different approach than the rest of the world to combat piracy.  Major American ISPs including AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have recently implanted a six strike copyright enforcement plan.   Content owners will search the web for downloads that violate their copyrights by using a variety of software that they leak onto websites hosting pirated content. They then track IP numbers (a unique number that can track back to your location and device) through the ISPs and back to the user using said software.  After receiving several complaints on a user the ISP will then send out a copyright alert to the account owner warning them of the alleged illegal activity on their account.  The user is then required to click on a pop up to acknowledge that they have read this warning; each copyright alert is considered one strike.  After five or six strikes ISPs may throttle down your internet speed, force you to contact them and receive educational information on pirating, and/or any other measure the ISP comes up with.  This new “six strike system” actually mirrors much of what several ISPs have already been doing when they have found customers violating copyright law, but the six strike rule unifies many of the top ISPs in a common approach to attempt to fight internet pirates.

Those who advocate piracy have a slew of reasons.  Some consumers feel that DRM (digital rights management software) restricts how you use games, movies, or music to the point that pirated versions are better to the consumers.  DRM can make DVD’s unplayable on computers, music unplayable on certain devices, and games unplayable if not connected to the internet.  DRM like SecuROM were created to stop piracy, but in reality they are a leading cause in driving consumers towards piracy.

“I didn’t know if the game would work, so why would I purchase it?” Said a CCHS student who was caught pirating software.

Some pirates argue that the price of virtual goods is just too much these days.  When purchasing computer games it is often difficult to determine whether the specific software will run well on a consumer’s computer.  Unless a demo version of the product is released it is impossible to tell how smoothly the software will run without first pirating it.  A popular rebuttal for music pirates is that if a song can be viewed for free on YouTube, people shouldn’t pay to listen to it.  Until the product or services offered by publishers are better for the consumer’s money, many will continue to pirate.

“I wouldn’t have bought the games, so was I really harming anyone?”  Said a CCHS student who received a cease and desist letter from his ISP for illegally downloading a computer game.

The MPAA argues that piracy costs the United States economy $20.5 billion a year.  However, this number is derived from the belief that everything pirated would have been purchased.  While this number and more similarly skewed information have been toted as evidence for the need in stricter copyright laws back when SOPA was first proposed, many consumers called out the statistics as far stretches of the truth.

“If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, [or] will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.” Said Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve who runs the online video game store Steam in an interview with the University of Cambridge School Newspaper.

More and more laws to fight piracy are inevitably going to be proposed, but the costliness of tracking down consumers may lead companies to change themselves to offer a better service for customers to draw people away from piracy.  As companies like Valve and Amazon offer cheap virtual goods, many companies will have to choose whether to promote anti-piracy laws or improve their services.  Although the best way to eliminate piracy is still undetermined, it will be a controversial issue and suspect to many new laws for years to come unless a serious shift in the digital market takes place.