The Growing Problem of Online Piracy

With the introduction of digital media, online piracy emerged as this era’s copyright infringement. Technology industries joined together in order to collaborate on ideas to stop piracy before it began to hurt their business. By these industries working together, they believed they could stop piracy on their own. Although in the last ten years, piracy has become prevalent around the world. The conversation about piracy has changed from once thinking that piracy was not a major problem to today’s realization that piracy is out of control.

In the early 2000’s, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) joined together with the Business Software Alliance to come up with a solution to stop piracy without the intervention of new government legislation. The industries believed that the markets affected would fix themselves by addressing the issues brought forth by piracy. While they were not entirely opposed to the idea of government assistance, they believed that they were capable of beating piracy. (Harmon) At this time these major tech industries did not see piracy as that big of an issue. They saw it as a phase that would be over once the markets adjusted to the digital age.

The RIAA was hit hard in the early 2000’s when peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing sites like Napster began to distribute music because of the demand created by the introduction of the MP3 player. The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster and the company was shut down in 2001. This was a major piracy site that was taken down with the system already in place allowing the RIAA to continue their business unaffected. Fast forward two years to when Harmon had written the article and the RIAA believed that by uniting the other industries affected, they alone c...

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...e markets would hit some rough spots, but that they would level out over time. They truly thought that if they worked together that the problem would go away without outside assistance. Sadly today’s ideology is that piracy is out of control and they need government assistance. The companies affected no longer have control of the situation and require that assistance to move forward.

Works Cited

Bilton, Nick. "Internet Pirates Will Always Win." Www.nytimes.com. The New York Times, 4 Aug. 2012. Web. 19 Jan. 2014. .

Harmon, Amy. "TECHNOLOGY; Music Industry Won't Seek Government Aid on Piracy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 Jan. 2003. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. .