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Anders Bray Issue Exploration Essay English 1010 July 30, 2013 The Effects of Piracy

I can still remember the day when my old man brought our first computer home his eyes gleaming with excitement. I was about four years old, and giant box was just as magical to me as it was to the rest of my family. The computer was a leading edge model D that had an intel 8808 processor, and increased amount of hard drive space from the previous apple computer that had recently come out with a whopping 512kb of memory.

Reading Rabbit was the first computer game I had ever played, I can still remember the pale green screen, off white

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plastics that seem so old now, big bulky keyboard, and the almost alien sounds omitted from the box. I'd spend hours on this box learning matching games, the would beep out alarming 2bit sounds for when I spelled a word right, or solved a puzzle. There was one particular game I forge the name of that was a labyrinth game. This was exciting because to play this game we had to connect to the prodigy network. The prodigy Network was a network that existed years before the internet, and the only reason we had access to it was because my dad had worked for a computer software company that had a handle in it's development. This allowed me to converse with other people, and users playing this labyrinth game. Let me continue by telling a little history, to give you an idea of the what the internet really is, and how it evolved.

Fast forwarder 8 years later I'm in a dark room surrounded by soda, junk food, and computer parts. I am at my neighbors house, and this is what we dubbed a LAN party. The glow of the monitors illuminate the faces of a handful of my nerd friends that are busy playing games, and exchanging different media, music, programs. A few of us were lucky enough to come by this media, through means of downloading from a program called IRC. IRC was the first instant messaging service, some of us learned how to use as a way to host ftp servers, to share, and download media. Using a series of command lines to find and join channels with the best warez ftp sites. This method was not only very difficult to learn, it literally took hours to find what you wanted to download, and usually you would just browse through what the host was wiling to share. Even at this time of my life there was a understanding that what was downloaded was not actually free, and that the developer, artist, or creator of such media is likely not happy about the fact that people have found a way to pirate it. This was just the beginning of files sharing and pirating, it would only be a few short years after that the music industry and film industry actually considered this a problem. To appreciate the magnitude of the issue, one

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needs to understand the history first.

The internet as we know it today was not this vast ever changing, pool of information in the beginning. In the early 1970's the origins of the internet came from one of the worlds first experimental network called the arpa-net. The arpa-net consisted of a handful of computers given out to select Universities, and Government agencies. Eventually in the early 90's this network became commercialized and available to the world. The freedom of unregulated information, gave the internet the form of what truly is the wild west of our generation.

Of course this freedom of information comes with negative consequences as well. As I said in the world that is the internet it can be likened to a modern day wild west, from anything like pirating music, computer viruses, hackers etc. Because of the vast amount of unregulated information that is the internet many governments, around of the world have censored their users access to the internet. And there are bills in the United States that are a hot topic of debate to do the same in the US. In fact many wish to squelch the freedom of the internet. Including governments that have public secretes exposed, Parents who wish the internet was free from classless images, and controversial subjects, and of course movie and music industries losing millions due to piracy.

The Motion Picture Association of America is estimated that the have lost roughly 466 million dollars of revenue due to internet piracy as of 2012... Although several attempts have been made to stop piracy, in it's tracks.. The people that participate in pirating always remain a step ahead. Eventually this lead to over drastic measures in trying to control what is the internet. Let me introduce to you the Recording Industry Association

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of America or RIAA. This is one of the orginzations that sought to protect the music industry, from copy right crimes etc. However it became clear that the music industry was so desperate, and the numbers of people sharing music so high, there wasn't way to stop it.

In 1999 a file sharing application came out called Napster, that would start the revolution of sharing music over the internet. This little application became very popular, and fast. Needless to say this got the attention of the RIAA very quickly. In the early 2000's Napster peaks with over 60 million users, and in 2001 the RIAA wins a law suit claiming that Napster had violated several copy right laws. This rendered Napster Dormant. And seemingly was a victory for the music industry. The death of Napster had quite the opposite effect however. People got a real taste of being able to have music/videos/ whatever they wanted free of cost, they could pursue whatever kind of art, and media they wanted, and so began to seek else where.

Suddenly There are file sharing p2p applications everywhere, Kazaa, Limewire, Morpheus, just to name a few... The internet goes rapid with file sharing, everyone from children to the elderly used these on a regular basis. The RIAA turns it's focus on the actual user suing hundreds of users for up to 150,000 dollars for a song downloaded, They generally settled on a far lesser amount. And although the scare tactic seemed to get a lot of attention it did not slow or stop this movement. The overly desperate ploy did not change the average user's mind... In fact stories started to surface of people as young as 12 years old getting sued by the RIAA for downloading music. What ever image of rational the RIAA had at this point was crushed. This would leave the permanent impression that the music industry has truly become a profit hungry, greedy, and desperate entity. Although they never really had chance in the world of the internet as it would seem the masses, or the people

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are the ones that have the larger voice in this domain.

Today the hot topic on this matter is the Stop Online Piracy act or (SOPA) this bill was already stopped in it's tracks due to the overwhelming opposition from the public, internet sites such as Wikipedia, and Google, and many large internet activists groups. In fact there was an actual black out date, in protest to SOPA that the several sites blacked out, or had some sor of censorship portrayed to show their opposition agains the act. The SOPA act was a sludge hammer attempt at stopping piracy in their tracks. This bill was created by lobbyists for the film, and music industry, in encompasses material that can be licensed... That is to say if this bill would have succeeded then people wouldn't be able to reference things that were licensed on Wikipedia, with out being sited for copy right laws. It would also hold the entire domain of the site where a video or song was played that doesn't have the right to play it, and essentially shut them down until the media is removed from the site. A big debate on this matter would be YouTube. If this bill had passed then the average video on there would have not been compliant with the copy write laws. Today there is a similar bill in the mix called PIPA, it will likely not go anywhere either.

The last thing I wanted to touch on was the actual consequences that piracy has had on the movie, and music industry. Despite the projected millions of lost revenue due to file sharing. Research has actually been proven to show that the people pirating are also the condenseur of the movies and music. These are the people that are actually buying the products as well. And because of the vast amount of exposure it actually helps in that artists, producers that are not mainstream get a chance to make it.

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Are people, and businesses losing money to piracy? Of course, However in order to profit, and progress in this day and age, the industries need to understand that there isn't any real way to stop it, and history shows that. The SOPA or PIPA act would only be a temporary set back, and in the long run would likely not save the music, or film industries from losing any profit. To evolve with the rest of the world, the opposite approach needs to be taken. They need to make their music, and videos readily available on line for reasonable prices. Although there are great examples of this that have been really successful. IE iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, to name a few. The archaic belief that you can stop piracy in it's tracks is still around, and this misguided belief will not help the industry only fuel the fire that is piracy.

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(Work Cited )

Leading Edge Model D. Digital image. Leading Edge Model D. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Aug. 2013. <http://www.moonshotindustries.com/computers/lemodd.htm>. "History and Debate of Internet Censorship." Debate.org. Debate.org, n.d. Web. 17 July 2013. <http://www.debate.org/internet-censorship/>. Naik, Abhijit. "Internet Censorship Pros and Cons." Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com, 25 Nov. 2010. Web. 17 July 2013. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/internet-censorship-pros-and-cons.html>. Salass, Nader. "Alexis Ohanian, Reddit Co-Founder, Talks SOPA/PIPA And Internet Freedom At Aspen Ideas Festival." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 July 2013. Web. 17 July 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/alexis-ohanian-at-aspen-ideasfestival_n_3575745.html>

Nani. "Internet Censorship Paper - The Invincible Internet." Internet Censorship Paper - The Invincible Internet. Nani, Jan. 2003. Web. 17 July 2013. <http://www.censorship.8m.net/paper.html>.

"SOPA Controversy Explained." PCWorld. Jared Newman, 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 28 July 2013. Emerson, Ramona. "SOPA: Anonymous To Protest Anti-Piracy Bill On January 18 (UPDATE)." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 12 Jan. 2012. Web. 28 July 2013.

Rushe, Dominic, and Ryan Devereaux. "Sopa Blackout and Day of Action." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 0018. Web. 28 July 2013