Broadband feature

The Problem of Piracy

Internet piracy - is it a problem and, if so, is there a solution?

Monday 19 December, 2011

By Duncan Heaney

The rise of broadband turned the internet into a hotbed of piracy, but how did it happen, and what can be done?

In 2007, the rock group Radiohead conducted an experiment. Rather than distributing their new album In Rainbows through a record label, they decided to release it independently online with a “name your price” scheme - people that downloaded the album only paid what they wanted to. Yet despite the fact that the album could be downloaded for free from Radiohead’s website, on the first day of release more than 240,000 copies were pirated instead.

Internet piracy refers to the unauthorised use or reproduction of copyrighted content online, and to say it’s become a bit of a problem over the last few years is an understatement. Radiohead’s experience is just one example of how prevalent online piracy has become over the last decade.

The word “piracy” makes it sound almost romantic - evoking images of swashbuckling adventure, buried treasures and Johnny Depp. But make no mistake - it’s theft and it does have an impact. Thousands of songs, films, games and other bits of content are pirated every day, and it’s estimated that illegal downloads cost the UK economy £400 million a year.

A very brief history of piracy

Digital piracy’s been around for as long as home computers have, but it was the birth of the internet which made it what it is today. Before then, most people had to share software, music, and video physically, but with the internet, it became possible for people to get content for free from the comfort of their own homes. And because people are fundamentally lazy, they embraced the idea.

Photo by jesus_leon

In the mid-1990s, the MP3 format rocked up, and started a revolution in how we listen to music. Suddenly songs could be compressed down to small, easy to store file sizes, and digital music became a viable alternative to CDs - although it would be 2001 and the release of Apple’s iPod before it exploded into common use.

But the small file size also meant that MP3s were easy to share. Music piracy was a problem for the music industry before the advent of MP3s, but suddenly it became a nightmare. Anyone with access to the internet was able to copy the tracks of a CD and distribute them across the internet via filesharing sites, like the infamous Napster.

The music industry was a more than a little peeved, and trade group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) went on the offensive, suing filesharers whenever and wherever it could. It destroyed Napster, which shut down its services in 2001, and closed down a few other filesharing services, but despite its increasingly strong-arm tactics, piracy continued to increase.

Video piracy took longer to take off, but quickly became equally prevalent. That’s largely because, even compressed, video files tend to be very large. As broadband became widespread, and connection speeds increased, it became more and more viable to share video between computers, but the practice really became practical with the creation of BitTorrent - a new, faster, process for sending large amounts of data over the internet.

Sites that use this system are often referred to as torrent sites. Many people use these services to legitimately and legally transmit data to each other, but they’re also a haven for pirates. Today, pirates continue to share movies, music, television shows, video games and more through torrents, and it’s very hard for authorities to shut them down because technically the sites don’t host any of the content themselves - they just point users to where they can get it.

Why do people pirate?

While it would be convenient if there was a single, easily addressable, reason that people pirate content, the situation isn’t that clear cut. Cost is obviously a factor - if the price of a product is more than a person is willing or can afford to pay, they might choose to illegally download it instead.

However, studies have shown that people view digital property as being different to physical property. Many do not believe downloadable software has the same value as the same software on a DVD for example. Content providers often price digital content close to, sometimes even more, than a physical copy. If somebody wants the content, but doesn’t believe it’s worth the asking price, a-pirating they may go.

There’s evidence to suggest that a significant proportion of people that pirate are actually good customers of media companies, and use illegally copied content as a sort of “try before you buy” system. If they like what they see, they’ll then pay for a copy through legal channels. Others cite simple convenience as a key reason to illegally download content. For example, it’s much easier to download a film than go out for a DVD, or download an album you can play on whatever you like rather than buy a digital version that locks itself to just one device (as some do).

Photo by bizmac.

For some, piracy is an ideological statement. They believe the government’s anti-piracy policies, or copyright protection that limits usage of a piece of content violates free expression and right of ownership. Some also believe that, with, say, a record company able to produce infinite digital copies of an album at no cost, that what they are doing is not theft, as they are not depriving said company of a finite resource that it has to pay to produce, so it is a victimless crime. As Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of the video game Minecraft, earlier this year: “If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.” The irony is that as tougher anti-piracy measures are taken by content providers and the government, the more committed pirates looking to make a statement become.

What’s the government doing about piracy?

A major contributory factor in the rise of piracy in the UK is that the law has lagged behind technological advances. Existing copyright law has proven hard to apply to the online environment, and there has been a lot of movement recently into making everything more clear cut.

The government hoped to address this with the Digital Economy Act (DEA). The central idea behind the Act is that anyone caught downloading films or music without paying for them would get up to three warning letters. When the third letter is sent, the pirate is put on a blacklist, and potentially faces legal action.

The big problem with the DEA is that it hasn’t really done anything except wind-up broadband providers. Some, including BT (www.BT.com) and TalkTalk (www.Talktalk.co.uk) have fought hard against the Act, believing it puts an unfair responsibility on them for tackling piracy. They also feel the restrictions placed on citizens impacts their lawful right to free expression.

What are content providers doing about piracy?

The music, film and games industries have been battling piracy for years, with varying levels of success. One common technique is to ship their products with digital rights management (DRM) - technology that prevents illegal copying. Unfortunately, this can be enormously inconvenient. Music CDs, for example, often had DRM attached that meant they couldn’t be played on a PC, and many downloadable videos and music had DRM that restricted their use to a single device. At times, DRM could be so intrusive it was as if people were being punished for choosing a legal copy.

But over the last few years, there’s been a noticeable change in the way the media industry approaches the problem of piracy. Rather than merely slapping intrusive copy protection and DRM on products (although that still happens), content providers are starting to shift towards matching the quality of service offered by pirates. The hope is that if things are just as easy through the legal channels as they are through the naughty ones, most people will naturally go for the legal site.

For example, DRM-free music tracks can be downloaded from retailers like Amazon and iTunes with just a few clicks. Music services like Spotify offer legal music streaming, supported by advertising. TV networks have launched free to access catch-up services, and a large number of media and technology companies have teamed up to create an interesting new service called Ultraviolet. When a movie is purchased, be it a digital download, DVD or Blu-ray, that film is added to the customer’s library. It can then be accessed however he or she wants, including streamed over the internet or downloaded onto multiple devices. Essentially, anyone who buys a legitimate copy enjoys the same level of freedom as someone who steals it.

Photo by joce01_y

So far, these approaches seem to be working better than previous attempts to manage piracy. It’s not a perfect system of course - buying digital content often requires software to be installed, and typing in credit card details is more of a faff than illegally downloading something directly. Even so, more and people are turning to their computers for their entertainment and the majority are doing so through legal channels.

Even so, piracy isn’t going away anytime soon. For many denizens of the net, piracy has become habitual. They’ll illegally download content even if they can legally get it for free, as the Radiohead experiment proves. Piracy has become ingrained, as much a part of the web’s landscape as hilarious pictures of cats.

Media companies will have to continue to keep innovating, because with the advent of superfast fibre optic broadband that’s speedy enough to download a whole movie in minutes, it’s easier than ever for pirates to steal software.

But maybe that’s not a wholly bad thing - piracy may cost the economy millions, and cheat artists and developers out of legitimate revenue, but it’s also forcing media companies to improve the quality of their services, and give more value to customers.

Pirate flag photo by kainr.