What is your take on the online piracy issues? Are search engines aiding in the distribution?
Christopher Randazzo
SEO Coordinator
With the aftermath of the SOPA and PIPA initiatives swirling around the internet, we’re forced to take a step back and ask ourselves why these were pushed so hard in the first place. If you haven’t been keeping up-to-date on the happy-haps in the world of internet legislation and piracy, here are the basics. First, there’s SOPA – the “Stop Online Piracy Act” – which aims to do just what its name alludes to: stop online piracy of all media from all unauthorized sources across the world.
SOPA would allow the U.S. government to force ISPs (Internet Service Providers such as Comcast and Qwest) to block certain IP addresses if a website was deemed to be involved in illegal activity. The problem with the bill is that its terms were so broad in scope; it’s difficult to clearly decipher and understand. In the interest of keeping this easy to understand, I’ll introduce an example. Imagine you uploaded a video to YouTube, one of a cover song of one of your favorite bands. While using massive amounts of resources to track ‘illegal’ activity on the net, if the U.S. government flagged your video for copyright infringement, it could be taken down immediately – even if the video involved you solely singing and playing an instrument. Essentially, lawsuits would run rampant across the internet for any tiny perceived infringement of copyright, whether it be a tribute, translation, attribution, self-production, etc. Any U.S. citizen found to be accessing a foreign website that may be or have been involved with illegal activity would also be subject to vague prosecution by U.S. jurisdiction. Another point commonly raised when discussing SOPA (and PIPA, a similar bill that aims to censor the internet, which would shut down any given domain if a single blog post was found to be infringing on someone’s copyrights) is the impact such legislation might have on social networks and startups. SOPA and PIPA would essentially kill user-generated content sites and cloud storage startups like YouTube, FaceBook, Dropbox, and Kickstarter, the leading exporters and job creators of this time. Consider for a moment if it would be worth it, losing the sites you use every day, just so the RIAA and MPAA could continue trying to revitalize a dying, crashing industry that refuses to change.
SOPA and PIPA aim to add to an already-ineffective piece of legislation called the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which criminalizes distribution or production of any method or system intended to circumvent DRM (digital rights management) software protection on copyrighted digital media. Currently, DRM is a hassle for users; for example, music copyrighted with DRM can only be played on certain devices with certain software, while the more tempting free songs from a pirate site can be played, burned, copied, and shared anywhere. Of course, DRM has had its share of opposition, and even huge copyright holders such as Apple have convinced the likes of big record companies to sell their songs on the iTunes store unprotected. User credentials are still embedded in song files, but as such information is easily stripped, record and film distributors are now trying to discover ways of delivering content to users via gated streaming, such as Spotify, UltraViolet, and Netflix. Though, in the end, internet censorship is a long, drawn-out process that never seems to get anywhere; the hacker community and thousands of websites dedicated to sharing content will always be ahead of the curve, so it seems to be up to the content producers, such as record companies and film studios, to produce and distribute media at a lower cost, through an easier distribution channel than has already been presented by piracy sites.
Recently, legislation has been put forth in an attempt to push Google harder to remove search results that link to pirated media. While this does happen on occasion with blatant illegal websites that are known for distributing media, the larger ones are never flagged. Even if they are, two sites exactly like it pop up in no time, ready to carry the torch. It’s unfair to hold Google responsible for its search results, especially when sites that distribute media illegally pop up like daisies like clockwork once another is shut down. Consider if you were on vacation and used your Garmin GPS to navigate to a city in which you could have some fun and relax. If your GPS routed you to a city filled with drugs, stolen property, book burnings, and prostitution, do you sue Garmin for guiding you there? No – that’d be crazy, right?
Sure, it’s easier to go after the legitimate companies in order to try and get results, but I have to ask: why aren’t any of these lawmakers going after the source directly? It may be difficult, but isn’t it worth more of their time and our money if the source of the piracy is dealt with? Audit your record companies’ and film studios’ internal operations – much of the time, it’s from within that media company such as pre-release DVD’s and CD’s are leaked. Consider who the first people are to get new media – the distributors. Why aren’t we going after them for allowing media to slip through the cracks months in advance, and for free, no less? All of what’s going on right now is a farce, a distraction, and without sensible solutions like better pricing strategies, an embracing of digital distribution, and (in all honesty) better content, these media giants will have to continue to accept the fact that the most seemingly-insignificant group of internet users, the pirates, will continue to prevail.
There are thousands of secretive online communities dedicated to the sharing of illegal media online, and I speak from experience – until law enforcement infiltrates these domains, gathers names and solid evidence that illegal activity is occurring, then MegaUpload and Oink will be the only real examples of the few times piracy has lost. The rest of the time, consumers lose, in the form of frivolous lawsuits and higher prices.
