A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Some claim that none are harmed by internet piracy, and that the viral marketing aspects of it actually help music, book, and video sales.

Regardless, those who assume there is no profit motive in piracy must be missing the ads plastered all over major pirate sites. It is just a matter of time before the laws turn to prosecuting those who provide the income for pirates: the advertisers.

I know several fanfic sites which had their donation accounts shut down by Paypal when they were found to provide adult content. I don’t have any objection to those sites personally, but whatever. The sites began accepting donations by mail and started taking on advertisers.

When you consider the huge number of hits pirate sites get, they are making some bank. Unlike fanfic sites, while creating no content themselves, pirates use the work of others to generate revenue.

Pirating would be a lot less attractive if there were no money in it.

It is difficult and undesirable to go after users of pirated material. Few want to crack down on fans. I certainly don’t. Pirates themselves can simply move their servers to foreign climes and keep right on posting.

But if prosecutors decide to get tough and prosecute advertisers, banks, and online payment services for aiding organized crime, we may see pirates forced out of the game because there is not enough money to pay for bandwidth, equipment, legal, and other services. I expect future prosecutions under the RICO statute, as well as additions to the statute to facilitate this.

Skipis told the audience of his opening speech that his group intends to keep German courts busy with thousands of lawsuits. He also called P2P file sharing “organized crime” and lamented that politicians were ignoring the impact illegal downloads were having on book publishers.

Wherever you stand on intellectual property rights, you can bet that governments world wide are going to start cracking down on internet content even more than before. Pirating costs the economy too much to be ignored by businesses and governments hurting for dollars. According to this article, 95% of music downloads are illegal.

A number of European countries are adopting/debating a 3 Strikes Law. The penalty: cut off internet service to people who have three copyright violations. Some consider the punishment too severe, possibly a violation of human rights.

A recent draft of the French three strikes proposal, backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, calls for a “graduated response.” Through ISP monitoring, users will receive e-mail and registered letter notifications that material was illegally downloaded by the IP address allocated to their accounts. Finally they could be subject to a one-year broadband service suspension. All ISPs would be required to comply with the suspension plan, so a chastised user could not simply switch providers to escape penalty. The plan creates a “High Authority” to oversee the notification process and possible broadband termination. This Authority would be able to obtain one year’s worth of Internet-use records based just on accusations of suspected infringement. The ultimate penalty, discontinuation of service and being placed on a banned user list, would be administered without a trial.

While popular pirate sites and their users claim that their efforts have made movies, music and books more accessible, the claims that they have also raised sales are largely unproven. DVD sales are expected to plummet 11% next year alone. Book sales are also on a major downward trend. While the rise of pirating may have coincided with a prior rise in film, music and book sales, a booming economy may have had more to do with those sales than the publicity efforts of pirates. Individual anecdotal tales of viral marketing abound, but without a control group comparison, or a comparable study of the sales trends of product which did not enjoy booming sales increases, there’s really no way to tell just what effect pirate sales have book by book, movie by movie.

Major governments already block content which is objectionable, such as porn. Expect the legal definition of objectionable material to expand, and to expand in such a way that it will affect both pirates and political speech.

In addition to all the other weird misinformation out there on the internet about copyright – and the rights of creators in general – the most common misconception on the part of many folks is that copyright violation is not a crime. It is merely a civil matter, and not “stealing”.

Copyright violation can be a felony.

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