What is piracy?

With the exception of Somali pirates in destitute regions of the world, and other isolated incidents, piracy on the high seas has ceased to exist. Instead, in today's highly-digital world, there is a new, apparently insidious way in which people are stealing from others. Chances are you've heard of a little sight called thepiratebay.org. It was only ranked the 88th most visited site in the world by Alexa.com. While there are numerous examples of file sharing websites to use as examples, for the sake of not divulging more than what is already common knowledge, only The Pirate Bay will be discussed in this blog. It is assumed that, anybody reading this blog is at the very least aware of the website's existence, because let's stop kidding ourselves - the only people who are hitherto unaware of it either still like Ike, or are otherwise unable to locate the Ethernet ports in their computers.

The very very technical definitions for piracy in the United states can be found here, under Title 17 of the United States Code, Chapter 5. It states that:

Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be.

But that's boring.

The people who matter (see: corporations) in the case of internet piracy are the people (remember, corporations are people too) with money. This blog will focus mostly on the RIAA, the Recording Industry of America, but it's important to note other similar trusts/companies exist: the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association), the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance) the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) just to name a few.

The RIAA cites examples of piracy such as:

"Music theft can take various forms: individuals who illegally upload or download music online, online companies who build businesses based on theft and encourage users to break the law, or criminals manufacturing mass numbers of counterfeit CDs for sale on street corners, in flea markets or at retail stores" [Source]

However, it can be broken down to simply "taking something that is not yours to take"; the RIAA and agencies like them have a fondness for using words like "illegal", "theft", and "counterfeit" (think about that one - how can a DVD truly be counterfeit in the strict definition of the word? Are the actors fake? Are the scenes different from the original? While yes, illegal copies they may be, they are in fact genuine copies - such is beauty and horror of modern technology). This kind of vocabulary is dripping with negative connotations used to essentially guilt their audience. Seeing as the international online community is not about to repent for the sake of contrition, a scolding from the collective record companies of the world won't change anything; and both sides, the pirates and those they steal from, know this.

Rather than just hoping these Generation Y pirates see the errors of their ways, the various industries affect by piracy are reacting. DRM software (Digital Rights Management) is becoming a more and more common tool to fight against copyright infringement. While DRM refers to the broader idea of embedding files with programming in addition to the content (a song, a movie, a video game, etc.) that attempts to thwart any "unauthorized" copies. This is done in a multitude of ways: Blizzard's games won't let you play their newest titles without logging into their Battle.net account. DVDs come with CSS (Content Scramble System), which is a relatively weak encryption algorithm.

DRM is however, essentially useless.

A quick visit to The Pirate Bay and you'll find scores of video game (big name titles - Assassin's Creed II, Mass Effect II, Starcraft II) torrents with the DRM still attached! What happens is that basically every torrent comes with a way to bypass the DRM that comes with it (this is usually done in various ways) - so rather than blow a hole through a proverbial mountain, they just walk around it.

So what is digital piracy? Neither the government (internationally or domestically) nor large corporations ahve been able to effectively curtail it; but it essentially boils down to people are still taking things from others that do not legally belong to them - only rather than these "people" being gruff old men with a peg leg on a pirate sheep, they're all of us.