Portal:Digital Piracy

What is Digital Piracy?

In the simplest terms, piracy is obtaining materials without the proper rights of legal ownership. In a broader sense, piracy can represent a whole range of intellectual and physical robbery. Like what the traditional usage of this term suggests, the theft committed by ruthless sea barbarians in the early 1700s is analogous to the present day methods to wrongfully acquire or distribute copyrighted material. Yes, the recent surge in pirated Pirates of the Caribbean films is, least to say, ironic.

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History and Overview Technological advancements in the years of the new millennium brought sweeping changes to the way data is transferred across the world. The rapid increase in the availability and acceptance of broadband internet connections has allowed people from the far reaches of the globe to download large multimedia files at much faster speeds than ever before. Sharing files between computers became easier for the general population to understand. The once dominant UseNets and IRC channels slowly gave way to user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) peer-to-peer (P2P) programs where anyone can make a simple search to produce desirable results. Emerging technologies such as Wikis and BitTorrent coupled with old tools like email and instant messaging provided additional techniques where information can be transferred from one client to the next. Finally, the adoption of standardized media formats improved the sharing experience as a whole. All of these changes, old and new, provided the foundations for the present day's pervasive illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Read More... Current Methodologies Advent of the internet and the rapid increase of personal computers means more people than ever before have the capability to share information online. Though these advancements give users unprecedented access to the world's data, enforcing proper copyright restrictions while allowing justifiable sharing freedoms have not been attained. Thus, many have pointed to these new technologies as the facilitators of so-called "digital piracy." Today, users employ many different applications and services to illegally transfer copyrighted material. Factoring intentionality out of the equation, this section aims to introduce these online trade tools. Read More... Sharing Secrets on the World Wide Web Digital Natives are at home on the Internet. Whether ‘hanging out’ on MySpace (see Danah Boyd's "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace" (2006)), organizing and discussing events on Facebook, commenting on each others’ photos on Facebook, watching acquaintances football games, video diaries, or dance routines on YouTube, or spilling their heart out on countless blog services, Natives are expressing, sharing, talking – and shaping, presenting and developing personal identities – in all types of spaces online. How aware are Digital Natives that these spaces they often view as 'safe' are actually very public spaces? How aware are they of the potential consequences? Read More... Blogging: Finding Identity and the Courage to Share Teens use communication channels on the internet to broaden their circle of friends to include both real and virtual friends. In creating blogs, they share in writing thoughts about themselves, as well as comments about others, and the world around them. Beyond strictly blogging, the page design and links they include are also indirect expressions of the self (Papacharissi 2002). This points to a digital opportunity - beyond the technical/ design skills being learned, teens are learning to express abstract ideas (in this case the self) through visual appearance, design, and affiliations. Read More... Asserting Identity with the Mobile Media The Digital Native is constantly connected. To be constantly connected is to have continual access to your friends, to your chosen information, to your creative outlet…it also means that ‘digital information explosion’ (the ever-faster growing amount of published information available) and 'Digital Information Overload' (defined on wikipedia as ‘the state of having too much information to make a decision or remained informed about a topic,’] is always in your face. The information explosion surrounds, shoving the native simultaneously in different directions, making it hard to stand ground as ‘yourself’ – especially when at times it’s impossible to even hear yourself think. Read More...

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 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. Read More... Problems Do digital technologies facilitate escapist behaviour? Consider, in the case of the Mp3 player, the comment of Keisha, a twenty-year-old college student: I use [my Mp3 player] everyday. I have the remote for it, so I lie in bed, and press play, and it comes on in the morning. And then when I walk to school, I use it to walk to school, and then, walking home, and I also have it on as background when I’m cleaning or something… I fall asleep listening to it through my speakers…I don’t like silence…I like to have something going on constantly, I think I might just sit there and think, and if I think too much, ahh, I don’t like it, I just like to get on with things. Read More... Solutions Read More... Relevant Research and Articles Digital Identity Forum Susan P. Crawford, "Who's in Charge of Who I Am? Identity and Law Online," December 8, 2004 Posting Your Resume on YouTube, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2006 Danah Boyd, 'Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama,' September 8, 2006 Chinese Web Site Rips Off Facebook, Harvard Crimson, February 15, 2007 Google and Your Health Information, eWeek.com, May 29, 2007 The Identity Metasystem: Towards a Privacy-Compliant Solution to the Challenges of Digital Identity (Microsoft, 2006) Identity and the virtual community (Donath) "Staying Connected via Cellphone (and Cellphone Bill)", 'NY Times', June 27, 2007 Read More...