For better or for worse, digital piracy is a part of today's digital landscape. While some people may not admit to taking part in illegal file-sharing or downloading, the majority of people are doing it, whether they are completely aware of it or not.
Even within the circles of those who claim to be most affected by illegal file-sharing - artists, producers, directors, actors, etc - illegal downloading is prevalent. It's this kind of hypocrisy that makes it hard for people of any group to support proposed government bills that would impose fines and possible jail time for those found to be downloading materials illegally.
Additionally, some groups even use illegal downloading statistics to shape their marketing and distribution plans. One company, BigChampagne, gets paid up to $40,000 from clients to help inform them of what is hot and trending with their potential customer base. This type of internal separation within the media industry makes it much harder to find support for anti-piracy laws, especially ones that are so overreaching, such as SOPA.
It's been long-believed, as well, in the software industry that companies such as Adobe have floated releases of their product on the web in order to spread the word about their product to a large base of people who would eventually want to upgrade to a legitimate version of the software. It's no secret that the software industry has been deeply affected by digital piracy, however, it's the fact that people within the industry are so divided that prevents widespread support for anti-piracy laws.
Rather than take the sue-them-til-they-bleed approach, most experts believe that the solution to the piracy issue is actually more about creating legitimate alternatives than anything else. For example, in the U.S., Netflix takes up about 29% of the overall bandwidth use while in Europe nearly 29% is used by BitTorrent clients. This demonstrates a key point: if you give web users a legitimate alternative which delivers everything they look for when downloading illegally, it's likely that they will choose the legal path versus the illegal one.
Another contributing factor to illegal downloads - the fact that movies and media are available much sooner in the U.S. than other markets - could be remedied by the industry if they just realize who their client bases are and then cater to them, even if it's a much different approach than they've taken historically. This could mean releasing movies and music internationally at the same time as they do in the U.S., or shortly thereafter, or creating additional content for foreign markets.
by Tim Roberts
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