The entertainment industry is becoming increasingly worried with the frequent increase of piracy. Endless development has made accessing and downloading music and videos much easier than before, which leads to an increase in the amount of piracy on the internet. As an illustration, the practice of illegal file sharing started to increase with the introduction of compressed formats of audio and video files known as MP3 and MP4 respectively. This type of formats reduced the size of the file without effecting the quality of the sound or image. As stated in the book, Guide to Digital Home Integration, the size of MP3 format is 1/10 compared to older technologies like tapes, casettes, etc (Wells, 2009).
On the other hand, for the owners of pirated sites, piracy/pirating is an easy way to generate revenue without any effort. For example, most owners of pirated sites, like illegal music and movie providers (Bittorrent, Utorrent, etc.) generate revenue from several separate advertising agents using the increase of visitors through their sites. For example, according to Hellienne Lindval, a pirated site named ‘PIRATE BAY’ earns around 30000′ 40000kr (Swedish Korona) per month which is almost Rs. 500,000 ‘ Rs. 700,000 (Lindvall, 2017). Still almost every pirated site call themselves non-profit “freedom fighters” with the motive of increasing the visitors of their site and expanding their revenue. Presently, almost all the pirated sites are not only displaying ads of gambling and dating companies but also some ads for companies like McDonald’s, Netflix, Ticketmaster and some Hotels with the aid of established ad networks as Doubleclick and Adsense (Lindvall, 2017). However, some of the operators of content theft websites are using pirated music, movies and TV shows to attract customers to their sites with the intention of infecting their computers and stealing their money, identity or holding access on their computer demanding payment. According to a journalist of NPR website, a malware called The WannaCry has recently locked thousands of computers in more than 150 countries and the users are confronted with a screen demanding a $300 payment to restore their files (Chapel, 2017).
There are several ways pirates have been used in the process of pirating. The most common type of piracy is known as ‘Optical Disc Piracy’ which is a major threat for the Entertainment Industry as it is very cheap and easier in distribution. Additionally, this includes Laser Discs (LD), Video Compact Discs (VCD) and Digital Versatile Discs (DVD). Even a person with basic knowledge about computing can make pirated copies through this method within a short period. Most apparently, this type of piracy is used in areas where there is a difficulty in using the internet. Moreover, poor people do not like to pay for original games, music and movie DVDs, because these goods cost too much. An original DVD could cost as much as the wage of a day’s work, or a week’s, or even more for the poor while pirated media is more cheaper in the market.
The other form of Media Piracy is Internet Piracy which uses the internet in the process of pirating. The way online piracy works is that digital files, also known as downloadable media, is made into a digital copy by making an illegal VCD copy of a particular movie. Once this is done, the movies are recorded into a computer file, which is easily transferrable to other computer users by simply sharing the file through computers. This type of piracy is more dangerous than the previous because it is very easy to share a audio/video file through the internet all over the world Immediately. By way of illustration, as claimed by Forbes magazine, the movie ‘The Fate of the Furious’ released on 14th April 2017 crossed more than 13 million views by 11:59 pm on 16th April 2017 on illegal online streams through websites and social media networks such as Periscope, Facebook Live, YouTube Live, etc. (Granados, 2017).