Entertainment Industry Should Understand Economy

Another research confirms that file-sharing is generally limited in both North America and Europe, but is still on the rise across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East. Industry observers called piracy “progressive taxation”, which can be considered a great theory reproducing the nowadays situation.

In this particular research it is said that the problem is actually not piracy but pricing. In other words, pricing can’t put any discernment into the strategies of the music industry, because it makes no difference between West and its less-wealthy neighbors. However, these weren’t problems that concerned the Recording Industry Association of America, because the outfit was too busy suing people and organizations within the United States. Back in 2008, the outfit took a decision to drop its strategy of mass lawsuits and switched to pushing Internet service providers into spying their own subscribers to stop piracy.

Yet, the actions of the music industry were of little success thus far, as well as based on the assumption that its targets were faulty. Meanwhile, the recent research showed that around 10% of North Americans appeared to use file-sharing services in the last three months, but the figure was approximately 20% at the European Union.

Nevertheless, on-the-rise economies of developing countries (Latin America - 45%, Asia-Pacific - 42%, and Middle East and Africa - 41%) constitute a larger piece of pie in the file-sharing community. The question is whether the world can be comprised of thieves according to these numbers, or the attention should be drawn to the economic and technological differences between developed and developing countries?

Major part of those who really infringe copyright respond to little more than a letter demanding to take the content offline. The servers that ignore the entertainment industry’s requests are generally located in countries where the books are unavailable for sale or are too expensive for ordinary people to buy. For example, in Russia the average salary is $500 a month, while the books cost sometimes more expensive than in the US – each good textbook is around $30, which the part-working students or their parents can hardly afford. As for the elderly people, their pension is $200 a month – and you have to take your time and calculate it out how to survive on this money, not what books to buy. These are official numbers, you can goggle them and the prices in shops of developing countries (and better visit them) before taking a final decision on which side to take. That’s what the industry should de as well before blaming China and Russia for all its woes. At the same time, the industry stubbornly refuses to understand that the simplest way to make customers stop sharing illegal content is to offer them a legitimate alternative, at a fair price.

School Teacher Will Sue HADOPI

A 54-year-old school teacher in France appeared to be one of the first users to be disconnected from the web under HADOPI legislation. However, he has no idea how to download illegal copies of copyrighted content, saying that he became the victim of Wi-Fi hacking.

The industry observers are tired to insist that the “three-strikes” legislation, which is quickly developed throughout the world, involves false accusations. In other words, there is probability that people who don’t download illegal content will find themselves cut off the web because the system is guilty until proven innocent.

So, the story with a teacher becomes one of the most predictable ones that the media have covered all year. A 54-year-old school teacher turned out to be disconnected from the Internet because his IP address was used by someone else to infringe copyright. The problem is that the teacher himself has never downloaded copyrighted content on the Internet. That’s why he’s planning to fight HADOPI, which only began issuing these notifications back in October of last year. According to the media reports, the teacher is even ready to take this issue to the European Justice court.

Meanwhile, the sad part of the issue is that the teacher is fighting HADOPI at great expense. Aside from having to fight the court charges, he’ll have to move from the countryside at his own expense if the problem be escalated to going to the European court.

Now the question is how this happened at the first place. Apparently, the teacher’s Wi-Fi connection was hacked. When he had received the second wrongful accusation, he took steps to secure the connection, but failed to do so, as the hackers still succeeded in breaking in to his Wi-Fi connection and his IP address was registered downloading the illegal copy of the movie “Iron Man 2”. In the meantime, the teacher is being accused of downloading that film though he has no idea how it is done.

The story came as no surprise, because with such a highly publicized new policy and outfit, Internet users were bound to cover their tracks by breaking in to someone else’s Wi-Fi connection in order to use their IP address to avoid detection. As the result, innocent citizens will get disconnected, while those responsible keep doing the same. It seems that the teacher won’t be the last target.

European Commission Will Force ISPs Fight Piracy

European Commission describes its status as “intermediaries between all Internet users and the copyright owners”. Thus, due to “unprecedented increase in opportunities to violate copyright”, the Commission has to explore the possibility of using their “favorable position” to fight digital piracy. In addition, the EC said that online market places and search engines will be forced to take some preventive measures.

A recent report from European Commission seems to suggest involvement by broadband providers, Internet marketplaces and search engines in the fight against digital piracy. The report recalls an earlier directive that was implemented 7 years ago and helped improve enforcement efforts. However, since then the web has created increased opportunities for copyright violation that the Directive didn’t foresee back in 2004. On the one side, the web has provided creators with the new opportunity to market their works. On the other side, Internet has also opened the door to new forms of violations.

The Commission says that part of the problem lies with rights owners who have been “unable” to keep up with the demand of legitimate digital content. Due to this unmet demand, a number of websites are currently hosting or facilitating the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content, while the existing legislation isn’t suited to solve this problem. In short words, the report suggests that “intermediaries” between users and copyright owners be enlisted to help fighting piracy.

For example, Internet service providers are identified as a “key” component of the web, which allows users to access unauthorized content. Considering the fact that today’s efforts have so far failed to effectively stop or at least decrease the level of Internet infringement, it is decided that more powerful instruments are required.

The report admits that any regulations it considers should respect privacy laws and the protection of personal information. Meanwhile, it also says that it needs to find “a balance between the rights of both parties”.

The problem with the suggestion is that the Commission could never properly address unauthorized file-sharing, because it simply lacks an inherent profit motive. Moreover, it’s impossible to fully quantify what damages have been done to rights owners by each individual file-sharer.