Narratives - Digital Piracy

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 wants not only his class but also the whole world to see his creation. Due to the fact that long segments of copyrighted material were used in the making of this clip, 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.

• Questions raised from this scenario:
  • What constitutes fair use?
  • Do copyright laws impede creativity?

• 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 can’t wait to get in line to see the first midnight showing. Unfortunately, the film’s 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 Trevor’s house, using Trevor's internet connection, nobody objects -- in fact, a few never realized this was possible. After a quick debate about what to do, soon the majority of the group wants the movie downloaded and burned to discs for everyone to have.

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>

• Questions raised from this scenario:
  • Who should be more responsible for the piracy? The release group or the end user?
  • How does group mentality play affect piracy?

• After seeing Trevor successfully obtain the movie, one of Trevor’s 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, Trevor’s 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>

• Questions raised from this scenario:
  • If a P2P program automatically shares all the media on a user's computer and the user is accused of copyright infringement, who should take the blame? The P2P company or the end user?
  • The tech companies hired by the media industries to track down internet pirates is known for only targeting uploaders, rarely downloaders. Is this technique working?

• Trevor's family live in a fairly large condominium complex. Although all the computers in Trevor's house are connected via an encrypted wireless local area connection, Trevor's laptop has the ability to detect and connect to several other neighbor's wireless routers from the comforts of his bedroom. Since his laptop's wireless card is set connect to the closest router, Trevor often surfs the net & downloads copyrighted media using his neighbor's connection.

Involves the use of the following applications: <Wireless Configuration Utility>

• Questions raised from this scenario:
  • A large majority of home wireless routers do not ship with WEP and WPA security turned on, causing many personal networks to be exposed to outside threats. If an outsider uses your wireless connection to facilitate illegal file sharing, what rights do you have as the innocently accused?