The Future of Digital Piracy

The future of digital piracy is unclear at this point. It is a very volatile topic as new laws and regulations are constantly being passed. There are groups in support of file-sharing pushing for relaxed laws and easier methods of sharing files among peers to make music and movies more affordable for all. On the other hand, groups such as MPAA and RIAA are pushing for stricter laws and more reforms to make their respective industries more profitable. The Stop Online Piracy Act has already made one attempt to become a law and more than likely there will be more attempts to get at least some of the provisions of the bill passed into law. This would really change the game of digital piracy as it would be more difficult than ever to download illegal content due to sites such as The Pirate Bay being blocked by ISPs. Barring new laws though, digital piracy will more than likely continue to grow especially as we advance our technologies. There will be obstacles to growth, such as Dropbox's ability to prevent copyrighted material from being shared, but there are always ways around such systems, such as encryption. No matter what happens in the world, I believe there will always be ways to download music and movies for free. 

                This is not to say, however, that digital piracy doesn’t cost movie producers and musicians millions of dollars per year, because it does. It does however seem like fighting digital piracy is like trying to bail water out of a sinking ship. There are other ways for artists to earn money other than simply selling music. There are free music websites such as Pandora and subscription sites such as Spotify where people can listen to music for free (or a small fee) and do so within the law.  I also think there will be a big movement in websites that offer free downloads of movies and music but charge advertisers fees for keeping the websites operational. Musicians can also earn money through sponsorships and other types of branding and those revenue streams may be supported due to the availability of free music. Rap artists have done a good job of utilizing this strategy through the release of mix tapes.

                One thing digital piracy has changed however is how records are rated as far as platinum, double platinum, etc . It is now next to impossible to track how many times a record has been listened to. Before it was simple, the number of times a record is purchased could be tracked. But now, for every time an album is purchased it could be spread all over the internet which makes it much more difficult to track the number of downloads a record has. I think file sharing will have to be decriminalized in some way if we are to ever have a similar system for measuring music success like we have had in the past. What was once a very accurate measure is now always subject to interpretation. Which is why one of the next steps in file sharing will be to count the number of times a file is shared, as well as downloaded, which will de facto decriminalize the file sharing of albums.