Piracy is when an organised group of criminals use force to deprive the rightful owners of goods and materials that they are holdings. Piracy thrives when policing is either low or corrupt, and incentive to professionalise the criminal activity leads to returns much beyond the risks. It is a profession based on a highly skilled risk assessment analysis and quick support from corruptible institutions, like politicians, regulating agencies and musclemen. Their nexus and unholy alliance provides the perfect breeding ground for the malaise to thrive and prosper.
Somali pirates of ships apart, three other areas where piracy has been rampant are publishing of books, music, and movies. But international concern is finally turning the tide against all forms of piracy. Music piracy in the West is mostly in the form of downloads from illegally operated websites. In a landmark judgment last week, four men who founded the controversial site, The Pirate Bay, have been found guilty of breaking copyright laws by a Swedish court. Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom were each sentenced to one year in prison, by the Stockholm district court. The quartet must pay £2.4 million in damages to several entertainment companies. This includes Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.
The site enabled users to search for links to music, films and computer games that could be downloaded for free. Set up in 2003, The Pirate Bay has an estimated 22 million users and provides "torrent" links to content stored on its users' computers. The prosecution claimed that by financing and running Pirate Bay the four encouraged large-scale copyright infringement of musicians' property rights.
Book piracy begun as reproduction of newly released best sellers at prices roughly one tenth of the original. Initially the books were shoddy copies, but with advancement on technology have reached technical perfection, and it is difficult to discern a pirated copy from the original. Just like music, today the internet is the leading source of book piracy. "Book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales." This is the bleak forecast of the Society of Authors, which represents more than 8,500 professional writers in the UK and believes that the havoc caused to the music business by illegal downloading is beginning to envelop the book trade. US Book Publishers lost an estimated $600 million to book piracy in 2006. Piracy in India is valued at US$ 38 million, that in Pakistan US$ 55 Million! China was a close second at US$ 52 million. It is not difficult to conclude that book piracy is an organised industry in China and Pakistan and the target market is basically exports.
Movie piracy is the most visible, and perhaps in India the most widely pirated industry. We all know how fast a movie gets converted and hit the markets. This is much faster in England, Germany and Pakistan than in India, coz the product available worldwide is now produced in our neighbor's, as it used to be in Dubai earlier. The MPAA states that worldwide annual losses due to piracy stands at $18.2 billion. The Indian movie industry is at the top of the pile with losses estimated at 980 million US$. Within 24 hours of two high-profile Bollywood films, Om Shanti Om and Sawariya being released, illegal camera prints of them were already on sale all over India. The Hindi film industry is said to make Rs 5,500 crore a year, of which 27% is lost to piracy. M M Sathish, of T-Series anti-piracy cell, has a grimmer outlook. “About 40% of a film’s business is eaten up by piracy,” he said.
a very thought provoking post..our nation is loosing so much of money due to this piracy problem…
My son keeps downloading songs and films from the net. I always wondered how such access was possible. It does seem unfair if ownership rights are being infringed. ? On the other hand if it is person to person, we would look at it differently, woudn”t we? After all , that we be pretty much like borrowing a casette or CD from a friend in person and making a copy of it for yourself at home. Or is there more to it ? What about royalty issues ? Does the original artist,writer get a share of all sales everywhere on a continued basis, or is it for a certain period?
So what are your thoughts abt Pirate Bay being asked to pay and the fact that, as the founders of the site have said, the site will ”almost continue to operate”? Let me give the initial argument to the debate. Because I think that its not right. P2P sharing is sharing with a person, so what if its done over the internet.