The Fight Against Piracy: An Uphill Battle
For as long as there have been ways to upload content to the internet, there have been people trying to access and consume content to which they don’t have the rights.
It’s generally acknowledged that online piracy has decimated traditional creative industries such as music and films. This has been achieved by eliminating revenue from a large swaths of people who should otherwise be paying for what they’re consuming. In fact the general consensus seems to be that paying for content is antiquated.
Are Streaming Services the Solution?
Over the past ten years, we’ve watched these industries struggle to contain their losses. According to this blog post, “One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes that global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost.” But these numbers are for the music industry alone, and does not mention pirated videos and software.
One of these ways has been through the rise of legal streaming sites. In a positive sign, the UK’s minister for Intellectual Property recently said “consumers appear to be turning towards legitimate streaming en masse.”
While it’s true that subscription-based alternatives like Spotify, Apple Music, and Netflix have given people a way to consume content online without breaking the law, creative industries are still searching for ways to root out the problem once and for all. One way they’re doing that is through agreements such as the one recently made between tech giants Google and Microsoft and the UK government.
As reported by the Telegraph, “The search engine operators have signed up to a clampdown that will see the UK’s copyright watchdog monitor the search results they provide for unlawful websites. The agreement follows years of campaigning by record labels and film studios, which have accused Google and Microsoft of turning a blind eye to piracy and dragging their feet over measures to protect copyright online.”
Hidden Agreement
Previously, creative industries have been simply waiting for online consumers to shift their behavior away from piracy and towards legal means of access. This decision signals the end of that wait. It shows the broad recognition that there must be a mechanism of top-down enforcement that compels internet companies to police their own networks. By compelling search engines to suppress search results that lead to pirated content, as this agreement does, internet searchers will be less likely to click on sites that have violated copyrights or infringed on intellectual property in the past.
Speaking about the necessity for collaboration, the UK’s minister for universities, science, research and innovation was quoted as saying “Relationships with our world leading creative industries needs to be collaborative. It is essential that [consumers] are presented with links to legitimate websites and services, not provided with links to pirate sites.”
Will it work?
While this step is significant and sends a signal to other internet companies, the question remains: Will prioritizing links to legitimate websites and burying links to piracy sites actually prevent illegal downloads? According to the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, roughly 15% of UK internet users access pirated content online. This is reportedly a decrease of 18% from a year ago “and was the lowest recorded rate in the five years the study has been carried out.” Are you still part of the 15%? Many internet users are and don’t realize it.
Accidental Infringement
What those figures doesn’t reveal, however, is how many of those piracy users are doing so knowingly and willfully. Google claims “that search engines are not a major source of traffic to piracy websites.” This indicates that this most piracy is happening by internet users visiting sites like Piratebay directly and willfully, rather than inadvertently stumbling upon illegal versions of content via search results. If Google’s data is true, this recent agreement may fail to undermine the most determined piracy users.
How to avoid accidental piracy:
- Check your software licences both at home and in the office. Many businesses won’t realize that they are not licenced for multiple users.
- Don’t share Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime accounts, as tempting as it may be.
- Be careful when using websites like SoundCloud. Many users don’t mind if you download their songs to MP3, but some do.
- Watch out for links to movies found on social media. Many of these links take users directly to pirated material.
- Check copyright information on YouTube, as some are illegal but have yet to be removed.
- Don’t copy and paste images from Google Image searches for your blog or website. Try free image websites like Pixabay instead.
- Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true – it probably is.
The whole scale shift to streaming is very positive in a cultural and commercial sense and agreements like this one help keep internet companies accountable for the results they display. However, despite these developments, rooting out piracy all together will remain difficult. A final solution will have to be multi-pronged, integrated and incorporate consumers, internet companies and creative industries.