Ahoy Maties!
Ready to sail, pillage, plunder, rifle and loot? There is a crime we are all guilty of: Music Piracy. It has been around for decades and for me, this is an unstoppable problem. So far, all attempts to cease piracy in the world seem to be refrained by technology advances, which facilitate the exchange of copyrighted material by free means.
Downloading music from the internet, sharing any copyrighted file with your friends or making a digital back-up of your albums are serious crimes. As some old commercials tried to teach us…it is as severe as stealing a CD from the music store and…you can walk the plank for that!The most affected companies have taken actions to reduce their losses due to piracy. Virgin Media is planning to use the software Cview, which allows it to analyze the activity of customers in the Internet, to search for illegal sharing of files using peer-to-peer sites. In the other hand, Apple is using DRM software (Digital Rights Management - Savvy?) to control the number of times you can copy a music file in different computers, limiting this to five times per file.
Are these actions against our legal rights to privacy arrrgh?! Sure they are...but they are the fastest solutions. The ideal scenario is to create a social aversion towards piracy, the same we have against robbery, murder, fraud and other serious crimes. We are not ready to weigh anchor though. For now, more severe restrictions are necessary to maintain the global music industry, along with a real and continuous education campaign.
