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 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 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 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>

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 Disney’s 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 owner’s 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.

Relevant Research

PiracyEdu Homepage

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? Well…, 2006

Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a Lesson, 2007

June 6, 2007

Majority of Youth Understand “Copyright,” 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.