Piracy

The DMCA treats piracy as an illegal activity. Specifically, it is viewed as an unlawful distribution of copyrighted or protected content. When something is labeled as being in violation of the DMCA, it is issued with a takedown notice, allowing the intermediary (i.e. YouTube) to remove the content without being susceptible to legal action. This protects organizations like YouTube from facing lawsuits because a number of users uploaded content they did not own. Of course, Fair Use laws come into play, allowing users to make counterclaims, etc. In general, though, sites like YouTube cannot be found guilty of allowing pirating of content should they continue to operate under the practice of “Every DMCA request is valid and the content will be removed immediately. It can only be restored should the user submit a counterclaim that effectively proves they are not in violation of DMCA.” However, sites that do not attempt to hide their piracy practices, such as The Pirate Bay, seem to be fairly immune to any legal action taken against them. As the article announcing Kayne might sue The Pirate Bay highlight:

First of all, the Pirate Bay administrators would have to actually show up in court. Then they would have to lose the standard argument that hosting torrents is not the same as hosting pirated content. Then they would have to actually remove the torrents in question.

So basically, the provisions that deal with infringement will only be followed by those who actually care about DMCA and pirating, in general.

I’m not sure whether or not it is ethical for users to download copyrighted material that they do not own. The same goes for sharing it. I am of the opinion, however, that if I own the content in some form, such as all eight seasons of House on DVD, then it is not wrong to access it online in some form. If I do not already own the material, though, I tend to believe that it is wrong for me to download it. That is how people make money and support themselves, and I am taking away potential income from them. I don’t typically share copyrighted material that I do not own anymore (I used LimeWire, and then Grooveshark, to get my music), but I occasionally watch television shows on (probably sketchy) hosting websites without paying subscription fees or the like; that’s how I watched Seasons 1 and 2 of Rick and Morty, although I’m going to try and watch Season 3 on Adult Swim this summer. I think people like free stuff and convenience, which is why they are willing to break the law.

I do think that we’re reaching the point where people are willing to go back to lawful ways of consuming content, such as Netflix and Spotify, because it’s fairly inexpensive and super convenient to use these applications. Services such as these have certainly made piracy an almost moot point; people just don’t seem to care as much anymore. Piracy will never go away, though, because there will always be sections of the Internet dedicated to “freedom” or whatever, but the number of people who illegally download content is decreasing every year, and I think a lot of that has to do with content creators getting better at distribution (i.e. Steam, Netflix, and Spotify).