While reading an article on the BBC about a known piracy site known as IsoHunt is to shutdown and the owner is to be fined over a $100 million. This issue took me to question the changes in fighting piracy over the past years and how it is affecting many production companies. However, will it ever be enough to shut sites one by one? If one goes another will rise, it will never end. After the recent shutdown of Megavideo and Megaupload surely other sites will be soon targeted, but surely we will always find a way to illegally watch, listen and stream entertainment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24580130
Related articles
- Hollywood shuts down isoHunt after seven year battle (bizjournals.com)
- Torrent site isoHunt to shut down as part of $110 million settlement with Hollywood studios (thenextweb.com)
After PirateBay another big piracy website takes the fall. The next one which they probably go after is KickAssTorrents (KAT). It seems like the authorities are able to take out Torrent sites because they provide a pretty obvious source for Illegal downloading. The same goes for the direct download websites such as MegaUpload, RapidShare, and MediaFire. The torrent sites and the direct download sites are more often free to use and very accessible. I believe that the more these websites are being shut down illegal downloading will shrink a bit the majority of illegal downloaders will move to UseNet/Newsgroups. Unlike direct download sites and torrent, newsgroups makes finding the identity of a person posting illegal content very difficult due to the trust-based design of the network. It will take the authorities quite some time to be able to go after the newsgroup system and by the time they finally due, the next illegal downloading platform has been established already.
I think the fight against piracy companies will never be won (that’s what I hope at least). As said before, when they succeed in taking down Torrent sites there will just be another site in a short period of time. The problem is that you don’t battle this specific sites, but you battle an idea that it’s okay to share content or download content without paying for it. And artists are just cooperating by uploading their music on site like YouTube. Right now I’m listing to music on YouTube for free and it isn’t even illegal! This is just a consequence of how the world wide web developed over the last years. The web has developed really, really fast, but the artist didn’t change their ways (at least not enough). I think that, as artists, they should be creative and actually make people want to buy their product over downloading it. Then we don’t even have to fight this piracy companies, as they won’t hurt the artist that really stand out!
I highly doubt they’ll stop piracy. Sure, they can shut down a couple of sites and beat their chest, acting like they accomplished something but there’s always going to be new ones popping up.
If you simply go to torrentz dot com, you’ll see at least 30 more equivalents of Pirate Bay or KickAssTorrents, with the same data and seeders.
They’re tackling this problem in the wrong manner. They try to shut down the sites, when the people offering the torrent are the root of it all. To solve that, they need to chase down every single person who spreads content which might scare some away but the minute they do that is the minute the internet will go ape shit and we’ll eventually make enough of a fuss about it that we’ll likely win.
Corporate money grabbers need to stay away. They can’t stop people from pirating content. Screw it, a pirate’s life for me. HARRR!!!