Modern Problems
Media Piracy
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(Continued from Previous page) Countermeasures that some theatres take include a rewards program for employees that spot and report piracy, as well as equipping employees with night vision goggles - the better to see you with in a darkened theatre (don’t look at the screen though… ouch!). It’s also encouraged to watch other employees for suspicious activities like sneaking people into the projection room. Other measures, including posting prominent signs advising patrons that recording devices are prohibited and piracy will be prosecuted, and the searching of bags for cameras is a useful tool. In the case of a special event, like an advance screening, police might be notified in advance of potential trouble and existing security will be enhanced for the duration of that event.
Music Pirates are often younger and less well off, and also less likely to cease and desist if they perceive their actions might damage the industry they are disrupting. The countries with the most illegal music downloads (in order) are: The United States, The United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, and Brazil. Napster getting wacked with the lawsuit stick in 2000 certainly hasn’t stopped all the other peer-to-peer file sharing programs out there. Monitoring file sharing sites has also allowed media companies to have direct interaction with the end-user of their pirated goods. 2011 saw the enactment of the “Six Strikes” enforcement imitative from June of 2011 on. So far, the 6 strike system is now standard policy. The Copyright Alert System has issued a video with a basic description of this along with its own elevator music. You can watch this video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26JzoZnIQl4 .
The first strike is a fairly mild notification/warning with things escalating from that point. Eventually, as a particular case evolves with further infractions, the target ISP will begin reducing bandwidth available to the suspected offender.
Video Game developers have come up with a fairly unique way to deal with pirates. Extra bits of code are being installed that are meant to activate in pirated copies. This alters a pirate player’s version of the game for the worse.
Some of these measures are progressive and others happen all at once. Examples include music being replaced with irritating sound effects, inability to save the game, disruption of previously saved games, your home base blowing up for no reason whatsoever, being attacked by giant immortal poison scorpions, your character slows down at key points drastically increasing chance of death, and the like.
The various media content producers are all in the same boat when it comes to piracy, but each branch of media has some unique tricks to deal with their particular marauders. Content providers should all share their anti-piracy notes with each other and (where possible) see if they can come up with a unified defense to decrease piracy even further. So far, my personal favorite video game pirate-whacker is the giant immortal poison scorpion. Maybe IBC 2014 will have something even better. I have no doubt!
An example of a peer-to-peer sharing program
Broadcast Beat Magazine / Sep-Dec, 2014