The 3 Step Plan in Solving Internet Piracy: Step 3

Step 3: An Appropriate Legal Policy

Now that producer-consumer initiatives have been discussed let's look at current and proposed legal policy for internet piracy. 

For many years, the U.S. policy has been neutral but inefficient and ineffective, as suggested by high traffic of pirated content online, and rage between producer and consumer that have led to lobbying for bills like SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and ACTA in 2010-2011. SOPA/PIPA are proposed legislation that wanted to essentially enforce no access to sites and software deemed by the government as "infringing"
 law (More & Infographic). They were shot down, boycotted and did not pass because it would basically censor the internet, but ACTA and CISPA did. ACTA was an international initiative to crackdown on copyright infringement, counterfeit, and internet piracy and CISPA allowed a broader no-warrant system for government agencies to access private cyber information. These two legal policies caused many file-sharing and hosting sites (ex. MegaUpload) to be shut down through DOS worldwide (took lots of resources to accomplish), basically taken down without legal due process from intelligence and security agencies. Government action is needed to reduce piracy, but ambiguous bills that prescribe a strict controlling solution for an already inflated problem do not help.

What concern us, is that internet piracy can ultimately lead to an extreme reaction through laws such as those discussed above, that would limit individual rights and the internet. Not only are these censoring policies unethical, they are also ineffective due to ignorance. China's government has the "Great Firewall of China" to censor their citizen's internet, but simply look how effective it's been; China still remains the largest hub of counterfeit and piracy. 

Author/expert on software security and copyright Bruce Schneier has proposed that the government focus on preventative standards such as software protection rather than regulation of the internet. DRM or Digital Rights Management, although a restricting anti-competitive practice, in one study has worked particularly well with software dependent on online service in which verification of the software is checked before it can be used. Anti-Virus and browser security that warn users about a potentially harmful webpage has also worked well in discouraging piracy by inducing paranoia/risk of malicious software attacks to users. Available software security technology such as these need to be applied where they are most effective.

One problem many companies have to deal with is the costliness of high-profile lawsuits followed by irrelevant punitive measures such as the case against KimDotcom's Mega-upload. On top of litigation costs, government resources, aka tax payer $$$ must be utilized in order to obtain evidence and subpoena. Often times these investigations are unworthy of pursing, such as the case in which a 9-year old girl in Finland was arrested after a house raid for downloading a song on the notorious piratebay.com.Those Cops must be feel real bad ass...

After reading Wally Wang's book "Steal This File-Sharing Book", I realized that copyright laws for digital property need updating. The book has suggested that legalization of clearly defined types of file-sharing, downloading and uploading would simplify the litigation process and have it more focused on the queen bees of large illegal hosting sites and illegal online vendors trying to sell pirated goods rather than adolescent down-loaders.

Aside from maximizing the potential of current technology and adjusting copyright laws, the development of a wrist-slapping policy should be emplaced to avoid costly lawsuits and also to be an effective deterrent. The government needs to invest in an accurate, efficient and fair system to mediate conflicts between producer and consumer. The Copyright Alert System or CAS, is a non-punitive piracy detection system being developed by CCI. It would serve as a fast (annoying) warning system to file-sharing sites that allocate high levels of copyrighted material. Instead of shutting them down without due process, a systematic 7-strike rule would be enacted. 

The first being informative warnings to the site owner to remove certain illicit content and to stress the seriousness of the matter, and the last would be a notice that "mitigation measures" will be enacted. Mitigation measures include temporarily slower server or internet speeds, reduced bandwidth or redirection out of the site. This would continue to occur until the owner contacts their Internet Service Provider or "ISP" to discuss and resolve the matter. Other variations of the CAS are also being proposed such as a wrist-slapping fining system in which internet users who pirate copious amounts of content and are caught must pay a small fine to their ISP or Internet Service Providers, which is then redistributed to creators. These systems strive to respect privacy and not be intrusive on rights, which is why they are still in development and being reviewed by the public. 

By changing our legal policy to an appropriate one that is more focused on developing piracy-mitigating technologies than destructive censorship or numerous unwarranted raids, piracy would be slashed. Increasing the application of effective current software protection through standards, modernizing copyright laws, and investing more effort to create a fair wrist-slapping policy would make up this appropriate legal policy. The overall goal of all these legal measures and policies is again to properly reward creators while maximizing the potential of the internet.

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