FINAL PAPER
a
research paper
by
Mohammad Askari
for
IDS 424
submitted
to
Uğur G. Yalçiner
18 January 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction....................................................................................................................................1
Literature Review..........................................................................................................................3
Contractual Arrangements:..............................................................................................5
Technological Solutions:....................................................................................................5
Conclusion....................................................................................................................................10
References.....................................................................................................................................11
Intellectual Property Attempts
Against Internet Piracy
INTRODUCTION
In a decade characterized by the exponential growth in both the availability and activities
taking place online, the internet broadly consumes a large proportion of our daily lives. Due to
this rapid advancement of information technology, the whole world has turned into one big
nation connected through this worldwide network. Moreover, the emergence of popular social
media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has made flowing of information among nations more
[1]
freely than ever. According to a recent statistics published by Internet World Stats (2012) ,
about 35% of the world’s population has direct access to the internet. As a result, technological
changes are happening at an unstoppable and incomprehensible rate that has far outpaced the
growth of the market as a whole where the internet could possibly provide the best possible
Accordingly, in a commerce driven economy, the internet provides every possible need
for entertainment firms to grow freely and in turn create more profit. Internet piracy, also
commonly known as copyright infringement, contrasts directly with the motives of these firms
by shortening their profit margins. Consequently, many companies seeking fame and fast money
have fallen for online piracy which has become a huge business lately. A recent study found that
websites offering pirated digital content or counterfeit goods, like illicit movie downloads or
bootleg softwares, record about 53 billion hits per year. That, for sure, robs the industries that
create and sell intellectual products of hundreds of billions of dollars. This trend has created
many flaws in intellectual property field which lacks sophisticated strategies to stand against it.
While this threat has long been existed on the internet to the owners of the rights,
attempts to regulate control of internet usage have only delayed the widespread usage of
copyrighted materials. Therefore, a multifaceted research and plan is necessary to employ tactics
and develop a set of solutions balancing out the need to fight against infringement of copyrighted
rights online.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In the past, everyone was at liberty to read a book without breaching copyright, but on the
internet the simple act of gaining access to a site and perusing its content may infringe copyright,
even if the work is not downloaded or printed out. The manner in which copyright is created and
infringed on the internet has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. In the
literature, the term ‘piracy’ is generally used to describe the cautious infringement of copyright
income from their activity on a commercial basis, many people regard their engagement in using
copyrighted materials as on a non-commercial purpose. That being said, considering the role of
every individual person on internet piracy, altogether it can cause an enormous commercial
According to Kain (2012) [3], when simple information is made available online, authors
of these works may simply not wish to place restrictions on the manner in which it is used and
may not seek any financial reward from those who make copies of their works. However, other
copyright owners and particularly commercial enterprises may see it as financially essential to
have their complex works, such as computer software, music or movies, protected by copyright
as the availability of their business is financially based upon earning money from distribution of
the work. Hence, to protect these rights, serious provisions have been made from the past to the
present to stand against online piracy and put an end onto it.
Internet Ethics:
One of the very basic attempts which has been suggested by a number of writers from the
past to present to stop internet piracy, is to change the behavior of users through education in the
ethics of using the Internet. In her article, Jessica Malm (2003) [4] asserts that in the long term, it
respect for the intellectual property of others via public education. But, as already discussed,
substantial sums of money can be gained through Internet piracy, particularly of computer
software and other commercial works, and ethical codes of conduct may simply be ignored by
serious offenders.
Marketplace Regulation:
[5]
Another principal practice discussed by Smith (1997) is that rather than attempt to
regulate activity on the Internet through the use of copyright law, it may be preferable for
commercial enterprises to change the way in which they market their products and conduct their
enterprises such that copyright infringement does not result in any meaningful loss. It has been
argued, for example, that creators should place material on the Internet without any expectation
that their rights as authors will be respected, but rather in the hope that the material transmitted
will advertise other works which are available commercially but not on the Internet. However,
considering the fact that the internet has been well established into everyone’s daily life, limiting
Contractual Arrangements:
Contractual arrangements are often regarded the most strategies being practiced online
for a long time. This has been in fact a more closely regulated system which may seek to protect
the rights of copyright owners by restricting access to material transmitted on the Internet to
those who pay a fee. Each use of a copyright work could, for example be accessed with a fee
being charged each time the work is used. In a world where electronic payments and cash are
widely available, those wishing to download protected copyright works from the Internet are
required to pay an online fee directly to the copyright owner or to a copyright collecting society
so as to use the works and services provided. Considering the case of fighting against software
piracy, computer companies often require users to buy a license key to use their softwares, or in
case of online services, an annual subscription fee is usually asked to get access to online
materials. However this should also be noted that, one of the major disadvantages about this
criterion is that those who are unable to afford the specified connection or license fees may be
Technological Solutions:
Apart from the last three attempts which were basically based upon individual acts on a
smaller scale, a number of strategies fall under the category of nationwide acts carried out by
governments. Such approaches are commonly referred to as ‘Technological Solutions’ and use
technology as a tool to deal with copyright infringement on the Internet. These involve restricting
access to Internet sites or specific works and introducing some form of electronic surveillance
SOPA and PIPA are possibly the two most famous acts ever introduced to fight against
the explosion of piracy of copyrighted materials mostly carried on foreign sites. Both SOPA and
PIPA target websites outside the United States that carry pirated content. The way they were
countries like China and Iran. According to Internet Society (2011) [6], Since American law could
not directly touch such sites, SOPA would allow copyright holders to ask American sites and
typically gigantic search engines like Google to take down links to them, as well as advertising
networks to stop doing business with them, and requesting internet-service providers to block
traffic to them via DNS-Filtering technique. While, such approaches facilitate the management
of copyright licensing and protection of authors’ rights, they are often suffering from lack of
support. As they target offer from the problems of restricting freedom of Internet usage and may
also involve the possible infringement of privacy. Consequently, these set of controversial and
opposing ideas to the nature of such acts put a pressure onto the U.S. government and resulted in
terminating the SOPA bill and possibly PIPA in near future (Gaudiosi, Forbes Mag., 2012) [7].
Unlike the last two governmental public acts, the Copyright Alert System is a private
endeavor between the ISPs and trade associations. In fact it has been recently launched by
MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of
movies through peer-to-peer file sharing services i.e. Torrents. The way it is supposed to work is
that MPAA and RIAA will monitor file-sharing sites and if they catch people uploading or
downloading TV shows, movies, or songs, they'll record the user's IP address and send it on to
the user's Internet Service Provider (ISP). Next, the ISPs will send their customer a series of up
to six escalating warnings, demanding the user to stop pirating copyrighted content. However, as
expected, the proponents of freedom of internet idea has stood against this act by arguing that
this strategy might force public services like coffee shops to stop offering free public internet
access. Hence the same set of actions, discussions and preventions exist for any possible similar
anti-piracy acts.
The previous study of the literature clearly illustrates how all attempts have failed to fully
terminate online piracy. Even though every act had contributed to decreasing the number of internet
pirates to some level, the need for new strategies is felt more than ever. It might be concluded that
there might be no best solution or answer to this issue as the failure of preceding anti-piracy attempts
highlighted the weaknesses and gaps in the existing literature. So further discussion and solution
On the one hand, the opponents of online piracy assert that piracy poses a serious threat
to creativity and in general intellectual properties in the world. They hold that piracy cuts into
profits, reducing the amount of money an author or a programmer can expect to make, and
On the other hand, however, the main argument of proponents of online piracy has
always been that intellectual property and its acts are against the nature of freedom of the
Internet. They also further claim that the financial impact of piracy on companies is negligible,
and that in some cases piracy may actually help sales of a product. Moreover, they argue that the
vast majority of people who pirate music, videos, and software are not people who would
purchase the product in the first place and are those who might actually buy the copyrighted
work later on if they like it. Besides, the opponents to intellectual property rights even take a
further step and contend that it is not internet piracy that is causing industries financial and moral
damage; it is intellectual property causing such issues and that it should be modified and possibly
As can be sensed, while some of the internet piracy supporters’ arguments might be true
to some extent, the idea of reforming and dismissing intellectual property is far from being
acceptable. It is a basic fact that freedom for one person may bring on oppression for another.
The benefits of having free access to information on the Internet and the ability to download or
alter any files without restriction may result in creators of works suffering substantial damage
CONCLUSION
The research of online piracy shows that it has turned into a huge business over the past
few years and that it robs billions of dollars from industries providing intellectual products. One
can easily conclude from the past study that the war on piracy is far from over and that neither
piracy, nor the fight against it seems likely to go away anytime soon. The international nature of
piracy, and the fact that different countries have very different laws about it, is another factor
complicating the issue as a whole. As much as this is a battle over copyright infringement, the
bigger battle is between freedom of the internet and regulation of internet content. The resolution
of the question of Internet piracy will ultimately depend upon how a balance is struck between
the protection of various public individuals and private sectors. An effective balance will enable
Internet users to benefit from the wide range of facilities and services available on the Internet
while ensuring that those who create material are encouraged enough to continue the production
of valuable works in the digital environment. Unfortunately, the number and complexity of the
legal and social acts over Internet piracy are such that it is unlikely that all result in reforms
taking place. We can only hope that those regulatory responses which are adopted will be closely
monitored and evaluated in order for coming up with the best possible balance to strike between
both the opponents and proponents of the idea in a way that neither of the parties would suffer
REFERENCES
1) Internet piracy Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved January 16,
2014, from http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/63907/internet-piracy
2) World Internet Users Statistics Usage and World PopulationStats. (2012, June 30). World
Internet Users Statistics Usage and World PopulationStats. Retrieved January 16, 2014,
from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
3) Kain, E. (2012, January 15). Does Piracy Cause Economic Harm?. Forbes. Retrieved
January 16, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/15/does-piracy-
cause-economic-harm-how-to-think-about-economic-frontiers/
5) Smith, R. G. (1997). Internet Piracy, Issue 65 of Trends & issues in crime and criminal
justice. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.
6) Internet Society. (2011, December 12). Opposition to Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Retrieved January 17, 2014, from http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-society-
joins-opposition-stop-online-piracy-act-sopa
7) Gaudiosi, J. (2012, January 16). Obama Says So Long SOPA, Killing Controversial
Internet Piracy Legislation. Forbes. Retrieved January 17, 2014, from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killing-
controversial-internet-piracy-legislation/
8) Weber, P. (2013, February 28). The anti-piracy Copyright Alert System: Is the Napster era
finally dead?. The Week. Retrieved January 17, 2014, from
http://theweek.com/article/index/240718/the-anti-piracy-copyright-alert-system-is-the-
napster-era-finally-dead
9) English, C. (2011, December 29). Internet Piracy is Not the Problem: It's Time To
Eliminate Intellectual Property. PolicyMic. Retrieved January 17, 2014, from
http://www.policymic.com/articles/3095/internet-piracy-is-not-the-problem-it-s-time-to-
eliminate-intellectual-property