The Pirate Debacle

I witnesses the blood bath first-hand. While completing my undergraduate degree in Music Business from '02-'06, I was able to see the falling record sales. The impact of illegal downloading was evident in decreasing sales charts and analyses.
I even did a presentation on the impact of illegal downloading in a Speech class, I showed the before and after effect of Napster, Limewire and others. The reaction was cold. At least half the students in my class  most likely engaged in illegal downloading. My data seemed to have no effect, I couldn't persuade them that deleting their P2P program was "right"; that artists were entitled to money for their work.

I was convinced that those who downloaded music illegally, by whatever means, deserved to be punished a la Copyright infringement suits courtesy of the RIAA. Then the lawsuits actually appeared, and received so much bad press that the RIAA ended up looking like greedy rich men stealing from hard working Americans.

There was the single mom ordered to pay a 7-figure judgment for a handful of songs still located on her computer. Probably not the best candidate for convincing people to stop downloading illegally. Pirates retaliated by downloading more; far from the RIAA's desired intention.

Today, Limewire has been ordered to shut down. So what. You can't stop illegal downloading. No amount of court injunctions can stop it. Pirates are too far scattered across the globe. Ease of access to Copyrighted material is too easy. Within 5 minutes I can download uTorrent and find the latest HD releases on Pirate Bay and begin downloading them.

So what's the solution? Not lawsuits. You can't "sue" Pirates into behaving correctly. Sure, you can get a few of the Pirates fined heavily, maybe even jailed for a short period of time. But you've caught one while tens of millions skate by. It's the law of diminishing returns in full effect.

There are fake ISP's, people who download off of public ISP's, their business' ISP, so how to do go about catching them? You can file a John Doe lawsuit in the interim, but then you have to convince the ISP's to hand over the information of their customers. Some will comply, but most fear the public backlash. But then they must weigh fines for failure to comply against losing their customers' business.

As an attorney in training, I must acknowledge that the law is very clear. Pirates are infringing Copyrights, no matter how a smart defense attorney can paint it otherwise. Copyrighted material makes up 99% of the content that's downloaded through P2P and torrent.

There is no simple solution. You have to convince Pirates that your album/movie is worth purchasing.
Good luck with that....