1 What is Piracy and File sharing?

Internet Piracy and illegal file sharing are amongst the many cybercrimes well known in the United States that have been and continue to be a concern. Internet piracy is the illegal act of distributing and or the reproduction of digital files that is traded over the internet. These files include digital books, movies, PC games, hacked software, music and others (12). As stated in one of the sources, the first types of files that were popular to pirate were digital music files, or as they were widely known as MP3s, due to their .mp3 file extensions. Software piracy is also very common and quite difficult to stop from occurring, along with the other methods of piracy (12). Those individuals who commit this crime mostly operate on the Internet; due to how easy it is deceive consumers of being a legitimate website to purchase from. Piracy its self is very widespread due to their nature of being really easy to cover up if the producer of such sites was to ever be found out of their illegal acts (12).

File sharing is the practice of sharing computer data or space in a network on the internet (13). Illegal file sharing is similar to internet piracy in terms of distributing illegal copies of certain files and products to others in a network (13). Files can be shared with ease at times outside of a network; an example would be of a person being able to mail a diskette with a file attached or by simply handing the copy to other buyers (13). As the file is shared with the other party, the person now has freedom to manipulate and or as well trade the file with others.

2 What are laws and consequences regarding Piracy?

When talking about piracy, this under-the-radar crime is committed every day without a second thought. A lot of people fail to acknowledge that piracy is punishable by law. The United States spells out the law against piracy in Title 17, United States Code, Sections 501 and 506. The law explains that an individual can spend up to 5 years in prison and be fined up to \$250,000 for committing such crimes. The “No Electronic Theft Law” (NET Act) is similar on copyright violations. Portable discs can be burned and shared within minutes with the technology of today which makes piracy so much easier and accessible. One might not think they are committing piracy but if you burn a cd or download a file without the permission of the owner of that sound or production then you could be guilty. The French have appeared to back down on the media piracy law over the last few years simply because it is such a hard topic/issue to control. They compared trying to cut off internet to users who share files with trying to “cut off the water” to them. This makes a big statement because the internet is such a global resource that it makes any type of government control almost impossible. Although The United States harps on the laws about piracy, the enforcement of those laws are still in the grey area.

3 How does Pirating work?

Internet piracy is mainly done by using Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and file sharing sites. Because file sharing is becoming increasingly popular, many users are able to sell counterfeit products to unsuspecting consumers. Many software is downloaded online nowadays. While there are many authentic sellers, it is never 100% guaranteed to be completely safe if the download is not from the original distributor. Music for example is pirated about 65% of the time. This is done in various ways such as downloading from third party websites and torrents. Hundreds of files are uploaded through fake accounts whose data is not easily tracked and can be created using proxies. Hard to find, easy to do. The user is able to create multiple accounts and continue this process over and over because websites almost never have any account creation restrictions. From this, hundreds of other links are created to other sites and from other sites creating a network of downloadable data from a source that is not authentic. Piracy users are able to place a piece of malware in the downloaded file which is then downloaded by the user. However, piracy does not just exist with music. Any multimedia application can be pirated. Movies, television shows, videos, any type of work can be copyright infringed.

4 The BitTorrent Protocol

Peer-to-peer networks are networks in which each node, or member, of the network can act as both a server and a client. That is to say that every node in the network can both download from and upload to other nodes. BitTorrent is a protocol which defines how nodes in a P2P network interact. It identifies content by URL and is designed to integrate seamlessly with the web. Its advantage over plain HTTP is that when multiple downloads of the same file happen concurrently, the downloaders upload to each other, making it possible for the file source to support very large numbers of downloaders with only a modest increase in its load (10). When a node containing a new file joins the network, the new file is divided into pieces. These pieces are then distributed to other nodes, which in turn then act as servers for the particular piece in their posession. As more nodes download the different pieces of the file, the number of servers hosting each piece grows exponentially, resulting in faster download speeds for the file from the network.

The original host of the file must also create a static metainfo file, also known as a .torrent file (10). This file contains information about the pieces of the original file as well as the Uniform Resource Locator ( URL) of the associated tracker (10). The tracker is a node in the network which keeps track of all of the nodes that have any piece of the file associated with all of the .torrent files which contain its URL. When a node attempts to download a file, it sends a request to the tracker who then replies with a subset list of some of the other nodes in the network that contain pieces of the file (11). The node that wishes to download the file then opens a connection with the nodes in the list and begins downloading pieces of the file. Once a piece has been downloaded, the downloading node then announces to the tracker that it has completed the download and its Internet Protocol (IP) address is then added to the list of nodes that have that piece.

The BitTorrent protocol allows for pieces of a file to arrive in any order (11). This is advantageous because when the file is being initially distributed, the original host can send a piece other than the first to a node that has no other pieces of the file. This allows the download speed for the file in the network to “ramp up” faster by making more pieces available faster. This is also advantageous because if a particular piece of a file is currently unavailable, the node can continue to download other pieces of the file instead of sitting and waiting for the missing piece to become available (11).

It is important to note that torrent files do not contain any of the data from the original file, only information regarding how to access said data. Although this distinction might be considered subtle, it can be legally relevant to operators of torrent file databases in defense against piracy charges.

5 Torrent File Database

Bram Cohen, who was a computer programmer, and a former University at Buffalo graduate student in Computer Science major, designed the BitTorrent protocol in April 2001 supporting the practice of peer-to-peer file sharing that is used to distribute large amounts of data over the internet.(10) BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files today. Peer-to-peer networking has been estimated to collectively account for 43% to 79% of all Internet traffic as of November 2009.(3) Cohen released the first available version on July 2, 2001, and the final version in 2008. He founded, in 2003, The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) website in Sweden which provides torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. This website has over 150 million active users and a total number of monthly BitTorrent users estimated at more than a quarter of a billion, as of January 2012. The Pirate Bay is the largest file sharing database on the Internet.(10) Since the development of peer-to-peer protocol, numerous download websites have become available. SeedPeer.me is a large torrent file database with over 3 million torrents files and has a search interface that is simple to use and a keyword cloud map which helps users to find interesting movies, TV shows, and music artists. It is highly rated by fans. The Torrenthound database website has over 4.7 million torrents and is one of the largest players in the torrent peer to peer (P2P) game. Their site uses “white space” in the side bars to enhance the reading ability for the user. Torlock is a totally different type of BitTorrent site. They pay their users a commission for uncovering fake torrents and reporting it to their community. It is recognized as being a tremendous service for downloaders who are tired of counterfeit files and wasted downloads.(1)

6 Attitudes Toward Piracy

Attitudes towards piracy appear to be linked to cultural norms. Decisions regarding software and media piracy have been observed as more succeptible to cultural influences than to individual ethical influences. Additionally, piracy tends to occur more frequently in a culture that “accepts, if not encourages” these types of violations (2). Lysonski states that this behavior continues due to a habit and making the violations of intellectual property a “routine or inconsequential.” One generation, known as “Generation Y," continues to pirate music and movies due to the belief that this generation has fallen “victim” to rises in prices for entertainment. The other belief is that pirating is the “least offensive” crime on the internet modern day. Studies show that many of illegal file sharing takes place in college students, and illegal media downloads in those under the age of 18 (4). The ongoing problem with software piracy starts because many do not see it as an actual crime. A model developed by Eining and Christensen identified five factors that influence the behavior of software pirating including “computer attitudes, material consequences, norms, social-legal attitudes, and effective factors.” Attitude is important when it comes to software piracy because it reveals intention. Studies mentioned by Al-Rafee show that this attitude can be changed through persuasion and change in attitude. This is believed by Al- Rafee, because “attitude shows intention, and with a change in attitude becomes a change in intentions” (1).

7 Most common pirated and file shared products

The most common type of piracy is the illegal copying and distribution of music, movies, and games. This is unfair to the people who produce songs, movies, and games. It is so simple to illegally download and is very convenient since it does not cost anything. Optical disc theft, also known as bootlegging, is a form of pirating that sells or distributes movies. Bootlegging is illegal, but continues to happen to make movies available for sale to people on the streets or the internet. Software is also pirated because of how expensive different programs are to purchase and install. The most commonly pirated software includes Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus, Intuit Turbo-Tax, and Autodesk AutoCAD. All of these softwares are very common and are very expensive. There are nine ways for products to be shared illegally. There is camcorder, peer-to-peer, streaming, optical disc, theatrical print, screener, signal, broadcast, and illegal public performance theft. Although pirating may not seem as serious as other crimes it is still very harmful. With all of the different ways to pirate, it is hard to prevent people from illegally sharing products.

8 Piracy among college students

Piracy is the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc. Today one of the most popular uses of piracy amongst college student is the copying of textbooks. Over the past 30 years textbook prices have risen over 812% which is more than new houses, and medical prices. The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has conducted surveys on piracy in attempt to keep their stats up to date. From 2010 to now not only has there been a 14% increase in students admitting to downloading illegal content, but use of unauthorized sites has increased by 40%. When it comes to pirating textbooks BISG says “This is important behavior to track, especially since it’s coinciding with other data that show declining student commitment to owning current editions of assigned texts,” said Len Vlahos, Executive Director. However, many students say they do it because they don’t have enough money to continue paying high prices each semester for textbooks. One thing is clear about the recent increase in piracy at colleges, those in the textbook publishing industry might want to find another field of work.

9 Works Cited