Discussion On It Is Impossible To Stop Movie Piracy (Essay Sample)

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It is Impossible to Stop Movie Piracy
There is no denying it; the broadband revolution has completely changed nearly every aspect of our society. Notably, the internet has drastically affected the movie industry, not only by redefining how movies are produced, marketed, and watched but also by changing the way movie files are shared. With the rise of internet use, online piracy has gained prevalence, particularly among the youth, a practice that is threatening to cripple the entire film industry. Over the past decade, a significant percentage of the value generated by films has benefited pirates and technology firms, pushing major media businesses such as NBC, EMI, and Sony Pictures into huge losses. As a result, governments in many countries have intensified the war on movie piracy by urging Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to work in close collaboration with copyright owners to block access to file-sharing websites. However, it is almost impossible for the government to win the war against piracy due to the fact that most websites and villains targeted are overseas, the growing popularity of Virtual Private Network services (VPN), and the emergence of new piracy websites; even though educating the public on the perils of piracy may yield positive results.
It has become increasingly difficult to completely shut down pirate sites such as The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, and Torrentz since most of them operate in overseas countries. Many countries such as the U.S have made significant progress updating their laws to prevent infringement of copyrights and the illegal sharing of movies. However, in many countries nations such as Tonga and Albania, the internet is still new, and there are few or no intellectual property and copyright laws in place (Peak, Chris). As a result, when pirates shift their operations to such countries, it becomes a nightmare for movie producers to track and take legal action against them. In addition, other nations, notably Switzerland, have adopted a progressive stance that downloading contents for personal use is not illegal. According to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, Internet Protocol addresses amount to private data, and copyright holders are outlawed from tracing file-sharers. Pirates have, therefore, found a haven in such countries; meaning the fight against movie piracy is far from over.
Secondly, despite the fact that film piracy is illegal in the U.S, the availability of Virtual Private Networks has made it possible for individuals to download and share movies without being detected. For instance, thousands of internet users have embraced the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) since they are surprisingly easy to use and very effective in hiding an individual’s identity online. VPN routes and encrypts traffic from a computer through a series of nodes, thereby protecting sensitive information coming in and out of a computer (Peak, Chris). Also, VPN enables users to keep their browsing data secret, ensuring that an individual’s information cannot be accessed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). With VPN services in place, pirates manage to avoid expensive copyright settlements, making it impossible for the government to combat the illegal downloading of movies (Ponte, Lucille).
Moreover, even after spending a lot of money and time to bring prominent pirate sites such as The Pirate Bay down, there will be hundreds of other sites springing up. For example, even after Napster was completely shut down by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2001, new torrent sites and other file-sharing sites are being opened every year to cater for the insatiable demand for affordable movies (Peak, Chris). The most common challenge for many people is finding a good movie streaming site that will not be flagged frequently. However, there are always other options for pirates to explore when ISPs block existing domains. For instance, many movie pirate sites always resurface within weeks after seizure by copyright authorities using different logos. One such company is The Pirate Bay, the most infamous pirate site that has remained operational for nearly two decades by continuously changing its domain name (Tassi, Paul). With hundreds of new pirate sites armed with numerous domain names in reserve coming up every day, the global cat and mouse game with movie industry regulators is set to continue for a long time.
Notwithstanding the challenges that copyright holders face to sto...