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Digital Piracy Essay

Sully

Hey,

Iv to write an Essay on Digital Piracy for college, and iv no idea what I should be talking about in it. Iv asked but I can never understand what exactly she is trying to get from the essay. It seems to me that she is trying to have a slight part of the essay on the background of piracy and then arguments for and agains, my views and a conclusion.

Any suggestions?

Im trying to search Google for Digital Piracy but im not getting much usefull results so far, espicaly definition wise. Essay has to be 1,500 words due in this day next week!

All help appreciated on this one. Cheers

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Cuddlesworth

Try goggleimg bit-torrent

Sully

Google Image is of any use how?!

lazygit

might be good to include the hassle that has been happening with sony the last few weeks...

di11on

Hey Sully,

A good start might be to talk about the evolution of digital piracy and the very many means of carrying it out - and how that's changed.

So we're taking about digital piracy... I guess the first commonly available digital medium was the floppy disk which appeared with the advent of the PC in the late 80s. It was very easy to copy floppies with games, progams and operating systems.

Then the CD ROM appeared which culled it for a bit.... but not untill the CD writer became available. With this, digial music could be copied for the first time (tapes and records being analogue, of course).

Then the internet became a mass distribution channel for pirated stuff..

Then of course you had MP3s..

DVDs and MPEGs and the DVD recorder/ DVD writer.

Then filesharing... (progams, music, movies)

Then there's also the whole area of cracking software, generating software keys illegally, hacking programs/games to work without Cds etc.

Then there's the area of Mod chipping games consoles so that copied games will work...

You could also talk about the various countermeasures against digial piracy...

- Program Keys
- Harware dongles (some programs require hardware devices to make program work, as a copy protection measure)
- CD copy protection (Safe disk and other methods)
- Lately, online product activation

There's loads more - just listing some stuff off the top of my head... hope that's of some use

Sully

Cheers for the posts, big help!

Anyone have any good sites about the arguments for and against digital piracy? Tried contacting the owner of piratebay.org but never got a responce :P

Syth

The Electronic Frontier Foundation <http://www.eff.org> is a non-profit US organisation that defends and campaigns on digital rights. They would have a lot of information on companies and organisations going too far to prevent privacy.

the_syco

Sully04 wrote:

Cheers for the posts, big help!

Anyone have any good sites about the arguments for and against digital piracy? Tried contacting the owner of piratebay.org but never got a responce :P

Check out their Leagal Threats that they get on a regular basis:D

The Troll

Look up the grokster case.

Also read up on lokitorrent, winmx and suprnova.org, 3 of the most famous cases of file sharing networks being sued(or threatened) and being shutdown. Look up the betamax case(most famous of all time re: file sharing). Alos, 1st batch of Irish file sharers to be sued has just been announced recently.

smeggle

Yeah - don't forget 'Napster' - probably the most famous case against illegal file sharing. Digital piracy is essentially the copying of copyright material for the sole purpose odf sharing that material illegal with others.

It also now has a lot of other areas included such as phishing scams for bank details etc, another form of digital piracy. Vendors of this type would or do 'Pirate' ligitimate sites such as paypal etc...

Sully

Would I get all the arguments used in court? Or just news that they were in court?

Capt'n Midnight

Have a look at "digital rights" too http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=570

Also look at the costs of media - CD's and DVD's are now given free with Newspapers. In the past this wasn't so. CD's and records had higher quality than cassettes and you had to turn the record or tape half way though the album so it took ages to copy an album and you had hiss and snap, crackle and pop.

Now you can put 1,000 MP3's on a DVD that cost €2 with a single drag and drop.

In the past there was no alternative to the record companys if you wanted media and there was no cheap alternative. Now you can get freebies or roll your own.

You could talk about the langague used to make copyright violations sound more serious. ( yes organised crime profits from professional counterfeiting - but one could argue that like drugs it's the large profit margin that attracts them )
Another topic is that piracy is a serious violent crime on the high seas especially off the coast of south east asia. Copying media is not piracy in legal terms , it's just a demonising word used by the rights holders. You could go on about the cinema ads comparing copying to property theft. One difference is of course when you make a copy you aren't depriving the owner of the original.

jaqian

Sully you'll get enough details & info for a book out of this you might consider just giving an overview of its history from floppys (the old "sneaker net") to the start of .mp3s. It was really Napstar that made file-sharing (in)famous along with the RIAA and now Apple have come along with their iPods and really made it popular. Maybe you could poll ppl here anonymously about how they share files etc and how they got started or even find such a poll on the net.

How big is this essay supposed to be?

Serbian

Download the movie Hackers off BitTorrent. It will provide some fresh and relevant information.

digitaldeath

I'd have a field day with this essay - especially since I'm just back from my one week ban for encouraging piracy!

BTW - it's nice to be back!

RE*AC*TOR

here's a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez

Sully

Cheers all, Ill let ya know how I get on

KdjaCL

http://www.slyck.com/

all you need.

The top news post is a classic basis to your essay altho he has added some serious schlock to it.

kdjac

jaqian

Fogot to say check out Bill Gates "Letter to Hobbyists" hwere he tell ppl to stop stealing his code etc. Its from the 70's/80's. Google it, should find it easy enough.

digitaldeath

I'd do it from this point of view:
"For my Digital Piracy Essay I thought that the only way to 'get into it' is to become a pirate for the duration of my research."

Start with a "history" lesson as described above then become that which you seek.
Explain all the various methods of downloading illegal material, how easy things were to obtain, street value of downloaded items, possible implications of downloading such material - cover Usenet, IRC, Bittorrent, P2P networks and Darknets etc.

Might be a nice angle to take it.

BTW, mods - I am not encouraging the theft of copyrighted material - just making suggestions should Sully04 decide to take this route.

Regards,
Digi.

Sully

Well I cant mention "I" or "me".

So I cant be saying, "In my opinion" etc. Im not allowed reffer to myself :S

jaqian

Make sure you post your essay here for use to read when its finished.

GreeBo

Also, vitally important when writing an essay like this is to pick a side and have an opinion.
You can do this without going into "I"'s and "me"'s but you have to do it.
Nothing is more boring (and poorly marked) than an essay that presents both sides and doesnt draw any conclusions.

Sully

My opinion? I think some parts of digital piracy is OK and should be accepted. Other parts I dont.

I disagree with some Piracy laws and I think these big music companys are screwing us over.

Even comments full-pro for digital piracy, I might not agree with.

Capt'n Midnight

jaqian wrote:

Fogot to say check out Bill Gates "Letter to Hobbyists" hwere he tell ppl to stop stealing his code etc. Its from the 70's/80's. Google it, should find it easy enough.

It would be inappropiate and unfair to mention that out of context.

In the intrests of fair and unbalanced commentry you could only mention it if you also included his dumpster diving for other peoples source code. And mention of the number of lawsuits that microsoft have lost due to copyright and patent infringements

Pa ElGrande

Is it a euphemism for copyright violation?,
Is it breaking into NTL's system so you can watch TV for free?
Is it unauthorised commercial distribution of products such as software, DVDS or music CD's?
Is it setting up non-government authorised radio station?
Or is it simply a socio-economic term used by mainstream media to backup the propaganda campaign by corporations that vilify children, parents and grandparents, who no longer gain value from their services?

Sully

Its to be 1,500 words to be done for Wednesday

Iv about a page done and ill start work tmrow :P

One thing I need badly before I continue: Can someone give me a direct quote either from a DVD or Film which talks about piracy at the start? Im gonna use that as my open-line.

Ill prob do a whole page to the start of filesharing, to the present day. Just an overview. Then the rest will be peoples arguments, views and opinions. Ill cite and refference each, while discussing each of the points raised and comment on them.

When iv a few pages done on that, ill give my views as a whole. Then ill draw a close in a conclusion.

Just a matter of hunting down arguments. Ill prob be asking people here and others I know on MSN and stuff. Or is that stupid? Iv seen it done in sample digital-piracy related essays.

Cant refer to myself in it, which is a bitch. Makes it harder to right. I prefer being able say "I" or "My" etc.

Pa ElGrande

In my eyes it is never a crime to steal knowledge. It is a good
theft. The pirate of knowledge is a good pirate.
--Michel Serres

This is often attributed to Michel Serres, a french philosopher, specialized in the philosophy of sciences- http://www.siena.edu/boisvert/m_serres.htm. But depending on the context of one's essay, one may find it appropriate.
Remember digital piracy is not just copying music and video, but books as well.

A most recent example is "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", where the book was scanned by individuals and put up on the net within 24 hours of being released in the shops, not only that, but within 48 hours it was translated to german by eager fans of the series.

aidan_walsh

Sully04 wrote:

Can someone give me a direct quote either from a DVD or Film which talks about piracy at the start?

Yer a good lad, Jim Hawkins.

Sully

Pa ElGrande wrote:

In my eyes it is never a crime to steal knowledge. It is a good
theft. The pirate of knowledge is a good pirate.
--Michel Serres

Ill need a cite/reference for that. Can you provide me the link to the site you got it from? Didnt get it on the one provided here

Thanks m8

Capt'n Midnight

Pa ElGrande wrote:

, but within 48 hours it was translated to german by eager fans of the series.

Wow - can you imagine any commercial organisation providing that sort of service to their clients ?
Really shows how the genie is out of the bottle.