Online piracy needs market solutions

30 January 2012

The first month of 2012 will likely go down as one of the most turbulent in internet history.

This was the month of mass protests against two bills that threaten to change the face of the web forever. Such was the strength of the backlash, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), along with its sister bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), lost a great deal of political backing in the US, and will now limp away from Congress before potentially finding their way back in revised forms.

Critics of the bills say that they violate due process and pose a threat to freedom of speech, with officials poised to acquire the power to block, filter and ultimately expunge any sites linked to file sharing – a move that has been equated with the notorious internet censorship regime in China.

January 2012 will also go down as the month that file sharing websites, many seemingly resigned to a degree of cushy complacency, began to feel increasingly under threat. The ripples from the high-profile takedown of Megaupload, a popular ‘file locker’ used to facilitate file sharing, prompted many similar sites to suspend their services or deny access to American IP ranges.

But file sharing is like a hydra: cutting off one head won’t solve the problem as users will quickly find new ways to continue.

Piracy may now be the norm for many web users, but the creative industries are making few friends by slandering the demographic they feel has deserted them. The name ‘piracy’ deliberately implores us to equate the practice with heartless theft, but the legal waters are be muddied by the fact that users are cloning items rather than depriving the owner of an original copy – a trick that seafaring pirates can never pull.

In most cases it isn’t true that people are simply bereft of morals – these morals are simply overruled by their desire to have content provided quickly and on-demand, and file sharing meets their needs succinctly.

The enormous userbase of Megaupload, and the fact that many of its users were paying for the site’s premium service, is proof that the willingness to pay for entertainment hasn’t gone away – only people’s expectations of how content should be provided have changed.

Region codes and staggered release dates in particular seem like an anachronism in world bridged by the web, and ought to be phased out if the industry wants to tackle piracy – a great deal of which is enacted by people whose desire for content has outstripped the pace at which it has traditionally been provided to them.

Whilst we still consume entertainment on a huge scale, the demand for physical items – DVDs, CDs, books – has been steadily diminishing, and whilst unlikely to die out completely, looks likely to be edged out even further by their electronic counterparts over the coming years. But the industry took too long to accept this fact and never fully embraced the digital revolution.

The shutdown over a decade ago of the first incarnation of Napster provided a wake-up call, but streaming services and legitimate downloads have struggled to make headway until relatively recently. Today’s leaders in this field, such as Netflix and Spotify, are beginning to set an example and demonstrate that legitimate services can reap huge rewards.

Following their lead en masse would be a brave step for the creative industries, but rather than sticking steadfastly to their tried-and-tested business models, dragging themselves into the internet age should be their top priority. The traditional middle men in media channels, such as record labels and music shops, whose struggles are never far from our ears, may be particularly at risk, but this merely underscores the need for businesses to adapt in order to survive.

As police stormed the New Zealand hideaway of the Megaupload honchos, some have already suggested that it may be looked back upon as the turning point when the chance to create a new online content-driven commercial landscape was finally realised.  Tackling piracy with a flurry of new laws is the wrong way to solve the problem – business needs to step up and fill the void.