To talk about online piracy, I will have to talk about mIRC. MIRC is a massive internet chat relay that enables users to communicate, share, play or work with others on the networks. This enables users to share music to each other, which is peer to peer. This program was created in 1995, and is still alive and kicking today due to the fact that it is a chat client. The government cannot shut it down, even though people share files on it that could be or is pirated. So looking at this program which enables peer to peer sharing of music, which has been running for over a decade, shows that online piracy will not be stopped anytime soon.
I would like you to take a look at a report by Greg Sandoval, which shows how little cases have been brought to attention involving online file sharing. In the article it states that online piracy costs the U.S. economy billions and kills jobs, which harms the actors and musicians as well as caterers and truck drivers.
To look at the battles that the current legal system has concerning online music piracy, we have to also take a look at Lime Wire. LimeWire which was ordered to shut down in the year 2010, and has now completely shut down since December 31st 2010. LimeWire basically enabled people to share copyright-protected songs. By doing this they received a federal injunction in October of 2010. Take a look at an article done by Dana Wollman.
To me reading these articles and experiencing online music piracy myself, it shows that the Government are not doing much to stop it. Also there exist certain programs that they can’t shut down. I know for a fact that a lot of people use torrents to download music and movies to their laptops or computers. In my personal opinion for online music piracy to stop the government would basically have to shut down numerous sites and programs, but this is not possible due to the fact that certain of these sites are not based in the U.S. and the U.S. government cannot shut them down.
Online piracy cannot be stopped through legal remedies in my opinion. When the music labels are able to get a P2P network shut down for copyright infringement another one pops up. Napster was replace by Kazza, which was replaced by Limewire. Now that Limewire no longer exists it seems as that a new P2P network is already becoming popular and its known as Frostwire.
ReplyDeleteFrederick,
ReplyDeleteI found it the MIRC very interesting as I have never heard of them before your blog. It makes sense that the government is not allowed to shut the site down for the fact that it is a "chatting" site that allow users to connect from different places. I also would have to disagree with your comment on the government and that they are not doing much to stop online file sharing. As Jeff said, they shut down Limewire, the largest P2P networking website and also shut down the first (to my memory) in Napster. However, I do agree that they do not much as much emphasis on the subject as the music industry does because they simply can not. I wrote more on the affects that the music industry's entire supply chain faces from lost profit. With that said, I also believe that the government probably should put more emphasis on the matter because I am betting that they lose a significant amount of money on taxes from album sales. Just a thought. Check out what I found on my blog if you get a chance.
-Cfree
Very true. The harsh reality of the matter is that the government will never be able to fix this issue but will somehow have to move along with it and find new ways and incentives for the music industry to shift their focus and make money. As stated, by the time legislation gets one program shut down, there's a new option for users already set up and in use.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you that this is bigger than what the government can handle. All you have to do right now is look at how the U.S. Government is handling the Cablegate situation. The government is so bad at it that it is trying to force bank accounts of the webpages and other things in order to get what they want.
ReplyDeleteThe response to this. Visa and Mastercard got hacked so nicely that their webpages were down for hours and some for an entire day in retaliation for the government trying to be the big and mighty big brother.
The one thing I will say and looking at your data is that yeah, the government is in over its head when it comes to this issue and it should not depend solely on the government for a fix.
It's up to the firms and agencies who market and sell these media products to come up with more reasonable methods of selling their product are more reasonable prices. The recording industry has managed to make some of us hate it after it sued the people of the United States during the Napster and later lawsuits.
Media producers out there. Please come up with a better pricing scheme or method for selling us your product!