Online Piracy: Has the saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch" become a dying myth?

Piracy is a huge issue for media distributors, in the music, tv, and film industry. Each has tried their hand at combating the problem in their problem in their own way, their first step was to shut down p2p applications such as Napster and Kazaa , then both the RIAA and the MPAA took to suing users who were illegally downloading content however this only represents only a slice of the consumer base and ignores the general public. The potential to capitalise on this market has not warned and grown exponentially. According to the new “Digital Music Report 2009” 40 billion files were shared last year, giving a piracy rate of around 95 percent. Watch this video for more info on online music piracy.


Many record labels now use some form of DRM on all of their CDs. Although any form of protection will protect music from casual copiers, the majority of pirates have little problem in circumventing them. Also for the software industry, keygens have been created by crackers which bypass the serial key required when you are installing illegal software.

One of the methods for illegal downloading is the use of torrent software. However this method is very risky as some of the peers that download a copyrighted file are usually organisations such as governments that trace your IP address which pinpoints your exact location. There are two methods of protecting your IP address against companies .One of them is the use of an Anonymous Bittorrent service called BT GuardThe second method of protection is a freeware program called PeerGuardian2 which is a IP firewall that uses an updated blacklist IP addresses known to track your activity.File-hosting companies such as Rapidshare have also come under fire for copyright infringement

In conclusion we see that the majority of people think that piracy is stealing but from a pirate’s view it should not be banned because banning will monopolize the market and poor people will be deprived to use them. Lowering the prices of legal products would shift the dial, but yet the “free lunch” will still remain.