Piracy

Piracy lived with a new meaning since the dawn of the internet. It no longer meant dirty men in ships wearing peg legs and eye patches sailing around the sea for treasure. It meant people in the internet illegally obtaining media. It was anything people could get their hands on for free; pictures, music and their favorite show and movies. As more people began to download things off the internet, the bigger loss copyright holder had.  For years, Pirates v. Copywriters battled. And although the original holders had some big wins like having the biggest pirating site shut down, they will never be able to fully stop pirating.  According to Paul Tassi’s You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You “As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead”. In other words, as long as technology thrives and lives, there will always be somebody taking content and sharing it online for others to have.  When I was younger, I remember when Game of Thrones first came out and how popular it quickly became. We never had HBO, but we always seemed to be able to have it ready. I would look at my brother-in-law and ask how, he would only lift up both of his hands and curve his two index fingers, like hooks. Piracy has always been a go to when it came to getting content for free. Timmothy J. Sappala’s Article The Pirate Bay shutdown: the whole story (so far) stated ”You didn’t have to log in to some arcane message board or know someone to get an invite — the anonymous file-sharing site was open to everybody and made piracy as simple as a Google search.” In the early days of the internet, people could simple take what they wanted. It wasn’t until people started losing money that things changed. Zachary M. Seward stated in his article Everything we know about how people watched “The Interview” and what it means for the future of internet video ”Piracy may be inevitable, but the early data suggest it can be mitigated with widely and easily available options to pay online.” In other words, piracy is something that can be prevented through our ever-growing systems of online protection.

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