Digital Piracy
Narratives
- Trevor is doing a project for school. Since he is very adept at video mashups, he decides to use clips from different TV shows and movies to assist him with the project. After completing the masterpiece, Trevor is very excited about his work and he wants not only his class but also the whole world to see his creation. He decides to post the video onto YouTube with an obscure name to avoid detection and uploads it onto five other video sharing services DailyMotion, Revver, GoFish, MySpace Video, and Facebook Video to act as mirrors. He then embeds the clip onto his blog and uses IM, email, text messaging, and Twitter to spread the word about this update.
Involves the use of the following applications: Adobe Premiere, Audacity, Trillian, Thunderbird
And services: YouTube, Daily Motion, Revver, GoFish, MySpace, Facebook, Textem, and Twitter.
- Trevor and friends are hanging out in his basement on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They just watched a trailer of an upcoming blockbuster film and the whole group is very excited -- they canât wait to get in line to see the first midnight showing. Unfortunately, the filmâs release date is one week away. With nothing else to do, Trevor proposes that he could obtain a copy of the film via a private torrent network whose administrator is a member of an infamous release group. A few of his friends brings up the concern about piracy, but since the group is at Trevorâs house nobody objects -- in fact, a few never realized this was possible, and the majority of the group wants Trevor to download the file and burn them a copy.
Involves the use of the following applications: Quicktime, uTorrent, PeerGuardian 2, DivX Player, XviD Video Codec, AC3 Audio Codec
And services: <Torrent Website>, <Release Group>
- After seeing Trevor successfully obtain the movie, one of Trevorâs friends decide to get more movies from a P2P program he installed a while back. After firing the application up, his computer freezes. Not knowing what happened, Trevorâs friend does a simple force reboot and after the restart, everything seems fine. In the background processes, however, the P2P program automatically shared his whole media folder to the rest of the P2P community without telling the user.
Involves the use of the following applications: <P2P Application>
Introduction to Piracy
In the simplest terms, piracy is obtaining something without the proper rights of legal ownership. In a broader sense, piracy represents a whole range of stealing. Like what the traditional usage of this term suggests, the actions committed by ruthless sea barbarians in the early 1700s are not so different from the methods Digital Natives use to wrongfully acquire or distribute copyrighted material online. Yes, the recent surge in piracy of Disneyâs Pirates 3 movie is, least to say, ironic.
The main driving force behind the argument against piracy centers on the degree of copyright infringement. The creator of a new piece of work has exclusive rights or ownership over all personal products of labor. Exclusive rights include but limited to distribution, reproduction, perform and make derivatives of the original. Under United States and most foreign law, copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of any works or materials secured by copyright. Such actions usually impinge on the copyright ownerâs exclusive rights, without a license to do so. Copyrights and the consequences of copyright infringement help protect intellectual property, protect ownership, and promote the society's technological progress.
Different Kinds of Piracy
General Methodologies
Piracy Among Digital Natives
Solutions
Relevant Research
Viacom the Latest Company to Misunderstand the Internet, Jason Kolb, 2007
YouTube-Viacom Page on TopTenSources, Various Editors, 2007
Viacom Terrorizes YouTube, Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, 2007
LA Times: Is Copying a Crime? Wellâ¦, 2006
Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a Lesson, 2007
June 6, 2007
Majority of Youth Understand âCopyright,â But Many Continue To Download Illegally, 2004
Movie Swappers Put on Notice, 2004
Poughkeepsie Online: Music Swappers Sued, 2003
Suing Your Customers: A Winning Business Strategy?, 2003
In Court's View, MP3 Player is Just a 'Space Shifter', 1999
US youths use internet to create, 2005
PDF: Teen Content Creators and Consumers, 2005 [1]
Legal Notes
Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute - US Code: Title 17, Copyrights
Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute - Constitution: LII
NET: The No Electronic Theft Act
DMCA: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Raw Statistics
The data in the following sections are pulled directly from studies done by various sources concerning piracy and other matters. Data is grouped by source. The goal of this section is to provide at a glace concrete data.