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The internet’s global nature makes it difficult to enforce piracy laws, but anti-piracy software, reporting systems, and education campaigns are the best defense. Piracy is copyright infringement, with the most common examples being illegal downloads of music, movies, and video games. In the US, piracy laws allow for up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Enforcing piracy laws is difficult due to the size of the internet and different laws in each country. However, there have been cases where piracy laws have stopped copyright infringement, such as with Napster.
Today, the Internet is one of the most common ways people get the information they need. However, the globalized nature of this communication system has made it very difficult to enforce piracy laws intended to protect content creators from those who wish to unfairly profit from their work. Anti-piracy software, piracy reporting systems, and campaigns to educate the public about intellectual property laws have turned into the best available defense against this crime.
In essence, piracy is copyright infringement. The term is most often applied to electronics or audiovisual/media. The most common examples of online piracy include sites that allow illegal downloads of music, movies and video games. Software piracy is also a common problem, especially for expensive programs like Microsoft® Office or Adobe® Photoshop®.
In the United States, piracy laws allow for up to five years in prison and 250,000 US dollars (USD) in fines. You can also face civil penalties that can run up to thousands of dollars, even if you haven’t charged for the copies. By simply sharing copyrighted content with others, you have prevented the rightful owner from profiting from the sale of their intellectual property.
Unfortunately, enforcing piracy laws is very difficult. The Internet is simply too big to control the content of each site. Also, each country has slightly different piracy laws. To properly apply copyright protections, you should know which country the owner of the website distributing the material was from, as well as the location of the person illegally downloading the content. Finding this information, tracing all parties involved, and waiting for the results of a lawsuit is usually too expensive and time consuming to be practical.
However, there are still cases where piracy laws have managed to stop copyright infringement. Napster® software, created by a teenage entrepreneur named Shawn Fanning, has been criticized for allowing users to share the contents of their hard drives and for giving millions of people free access to an entire library of songs copyrighted. The company has been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), rapper Dr. Dre and hard rock band Metallica. The lawsuits forced the company into bankruptcy, though it later reemerged as a legitimate MP3 download resource. Hundreds of individual Napster® users who allegedly shared 1,000 or more songs have also been sued by the RIAA, although many of these cases have been dismissed or settled for smaller amounts due to the intense negative publicity.
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