You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You
by Paul Tassi
Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won. It can’t, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling. As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead. But what’s clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That’s what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures. So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks. (This is all purely theoretical of course) 1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark 2. Type in The Hangover 2 (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example) 3. Click on result with highest seeds 4. Click download torrent 5. Auto open uTorrent 6. Wait ten minutes to download 7. Play movie, own it forever February 6, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Forbes
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